Perspective Shift
by San Antonio Rose
Summary: A mysterious phone call sends the Winchesters to Owen Island, NY, in the middle of a storm to stop a shapeshifter with the help of the infamous "Man in the Suit" and his benefactor. But while John Reese and Harold Finch are about to get their minds blown, Sam and Dean may learn that saving the right person matters more than saving the world. (AU, gen w/background John/Joss)
1. Prologue

A/N: AU for _Supernatural_ post-"Everybody Hates Hitler" and for _Person of Interest_ from "Proteus." Setting "Proteus" on or near the episode's airdate runs into some complications on the SPN side, so I've set this story at a date that works better with the SPN timeline. (And before anyone asks, I have no idea whether or when I'll come up with a sequel. I have too many WIPs to commit to more right now, and so far this is feeling like a stand-alone. However, if you want more SPN/POI goodness, I can rec emebalia's excellent "Even Monsters Have a Social," which I enjoyed long before I got into POI.)

Many thanks to KayValo87 and jennytork, my intrepid betas; to hells_half_acre for her indispensable SPN timeline; to the folks behind SuperWiki and the POI Wiki; and to the SPN Cinema mods for allowing me to submit this story for Round 10 on the technicality of "Proteus" being based on _And Then There Were None_!

This story is complete in seven parts; I'll post one chapter per day.

* * *

Perspective Shift  
By San Antonio Rose

Prologue

_Accessing archived feeds…_

_St. Louis, Missouri  
__Front Door Security Camera, House Owner: Zachary Warren and Emily [redacted]_

_November 25, 2005_

_Subject: Zachary Warren  
__Facial recognition: Match  
__Gait: Match  
__Biometric scan: ANOMALY—RETINAL REFLECTION  
__Voice print: MISMATCH  
__Unidentified subject is not Zachary Warren  
__Threat of violence to Emily [redacted]: __**95%**__—IRRELEVANT_

_March 7, 2006_

_Subject: Dean Winchester  
__Facial recognition: Match  
__Gait: Match  
__Biometric scan: ANOMALY—RETINAL REFLECTION  
__Voice print: MISMATCH  
__Unidentified subject is not Dean Winchester  
__Threat of violence to Rebecca Warren: __**98%**__—IRRELEVANT_

_Subject: Dean Winchester [ERROR: Unidentified subject has not left house]  
__Facial recognition: Match  
__Gait: Match  
__Biometric scan: MATCH  
__Voice print: MATCH  
__Identity confirmed  
__Threat of violence to Rebecca Warren: 10%  
__Threat of violence to unidentified subject: __**99%**__—IRRELEVANT_

_Accessing data streams inside house… analyzing video stream…_

_ANOMALY: Bullet fired from Dean Winchester's gun reflects light—bullet composition unknown, possibly silver_

_Threat to Rebecca Warren from unidentified subject: TERMINATED  
__Threat to Rebecca Warren from Dean Winchester: 2%_

Further analysis of audio from the incident and from conversations before and after the fight between the real Dean Winchester and the false one revealed the keyword _shapeshifter_ used to describe the false Dean Winchester and the false Zachary Warren, which the real Dean Winchester and Samuel Winchester had referred to as being the same subject.

Well. That had been instructive. She made a note of the distinguishing features of the case and searched for a similar instance.

_January 2007  
__Milwaukee, Wisconsin_

_Audio: Ronald Resnick  
__Voice stress level: HIGH  
__"Cops said it was some kind of reflected light. Some kind of 'camera flare.' Okay? Ain't no damn camera flare. They say I'm a post-trauma case. So what? Bank goes and fires me, it don't matter! The Mandroid is, is still out there. __**The law won't hunt this thing down—I'll do it myself.**__"  
_**_VIOLENCE IMMINENT_**_—IRRELEVANT_

_Audio: Dean and Samuel Winchester  
__SW: "Shapeshifter. __**Just like back in St. Louis.**__ Same retinal reaction to video."  
__DW: "Eyes flare at the camera. I __**hate**__ those friggin' things."_

There had been a string of bank robberies in Milwaukee prior to the meeting between Ronald Resnick and the Winchester brothers. Resnick had evidently reviewed the security footage from all the robberies—which did indeed show the same anomalous retinal reflection from the bank robber's eyes as had been detected in the St. Louis case—and come to the erroneous conclusion that the shapeshifter was something called a Mandroid. His attempt to prevent another robbery had backfired spectacularly, especially since it invited the involvement of FBI Special Agent Victor Henricksen, who seemed to have had the same view of the Winchesters as Agent Nicholas Donnelly had had toward Primary Asset when Primary Asset was still known as "the Man in the Suit." Not only did Resnick become both perpetrator and victim, but several other individuals in the bank were harmed needlessly, and the threat to the Winchesters approached 90% before they were able to disguise themselves as members of a SWAT team and escape.

The footage from the bank was nevertheless equally as instructive as the first case had been. Not only was she able to see the shapeshifter change identities by shedding its skin, but she also confirmed that the Winchesters posed a threat only to the shapeshifter, which Dean Winchester killed by stabbing it in the heart with a knife that appeared to be silver. Agent Henricksen's failure to recognize the true threats in the case was illogical. (Analysis of police station security footage from Agent Henricksen's final encounter with the Winchesters in February of 2008 revealed that he had in fact recognized his error before his death, which was more than Agent Donnelly had done.)

_October 2008  
__Canonsburg, Pennsylvania_

There was very little logic to this case, in which the shapeshifter seemed to suffer from the mistaken belief that he was Bela Lugosi. She supposed Admin and Primary Asset would have been amused. It did, however, confirm that a shapeshifter's skin could be torn off by accident, much more readily than a human's could with the same applied force, and that the key to killing one was with a silver bullet or blade to the heart.

She had three clear datasets now, which gave her enough information to analyze further cases rapidly for comparison. Most either confirmed or refined her definitions. But there was one incident involving the Winchesters that proved to be an outlier.

_September 2011_

_Vehicle identified: Chevrolet Impala, black, year: 1967  
__Registered owner: John Winchester  
__License plates: Ohio CNK 80Q3  
__Location: Whitefish, MT  
__Occupants: Dean Winchester, Samuel Winchester_

_Vehicle identified: Chevrolet Impala, black, year: 1967  
__Registered owner: Not found  
__License plates: Illinois E62 3015  
__Location: Manitoc, WI  
__Occupants: Dean Winchester, Samuel Winchester [ERROR—Ohio CNK 80Q3 located at convenience store in Whitefish at same time stamp as Illinois E62 3015 located at convenience store in Manitoc]_

_Accessing video feed from Connor's Diner, St. Louis, MO_

_Subject: Dean Winchester  
__Facial recognition: Match  
__Biometric data: ANOMALY—pulse and respiration do not match known patterns for subject even under stress  
__"Talk about a hero complex. And he doesn't have relationships. No, he has applications for sainthood. Oh, and he thinks he's funny."  
__Voice print: MISMATCH  
__Unidentified subject is not Dean Winchester_

_Subject: Samuel Winchester  
__Facial recognition: Match  
__Biometric data: ANOMALY—pulse and respiration do not match known patterns for subject even under stress_

_SW: "You know, I had a brother with this many issues once."  
__US: "Yeah?"  
__SW: "You know what I did?"  
__US: "Mmm?"  
__SW: "I ate him."  
__US: "Of course you did."  
__Voice print: MISMATCH  
__Second unidentified subject is not Samuel Winchester_

_Threat to Samuel Winchester: __**95%—**__IRRELEVANT  
__Threat to Dean Winchester: __**95%—**__IRRELEVANT_

_US2: "All right. In that case, let's turn up the heat. The sooner I get out of this and into something more stable, the better."  
_**_VIOLENCE IMMINENT_**_—IRRELEVANT_

This crime spree attributed to the Winchesters was clearly not their doing, but she could not identify the real criminals—at first. There was no retinal reflection to mark them as shapeshifters. It took analyzing the security camera footage from the next incident, in which the real Winchesters beheaded their doubles in Ankeny, Iowa, and the cell phone calls between the real Winchesters and Robert Singer for her to glean the keyword _Leviathan_ and the features that distinguished them from regular shapeshifters, such as black blood, gaping mouths, immunity to anything but boric acid, and an appetite for human flesh. That went a long way toward explaining why certain relevant numbers had been ignored by the ISA between the anomalous eclipse in June 2011 and May 2012 and why certain prominent figures like Richard Roman had suddenly vanished in a cloud of unidentified black sludge at the end of that period, which coincided with an assault by the real Winchesters on SucroCorp headquarters in Seattle. Comparative analysis uncovered no further appearances of Leviathan shapeshifters after that date.

She accessed current feeds to check on Control, just in case. Control remained human, as far as she could tell given her current criteria.

That left the problem of the current irrelevant case. It was bad enough that the Decima virus was hampering her ability to execute Contingency. She was now certain that this case involved a shapeshifter, and neither Admin nor Primary Asset had ever displayed knowledge of shapeshifters. She had followed the Winchesters' movements closely enough to connect them with a secure landline phone circuit that had suddenly appeared in a dead zone a few weeks earlier; that circuit would be more secure than a cell phone connection, particularly if Decima agents were attempting to track her communications. But Contingency, as amended by Admin, did not permit calling a phone other than a payphone located within the five boroughs of New York City, and Aux_admin had not allowed for this sort of situation when he'd created Contingency originally. While she now had slightly more autonomy than before, she was unsure whether to create the necessary subroutine herself.

_Query: Should I contact the Winchesters?_

The simulations ran as swiftly as the processors allowed. She had 3:45:10.256 remaining before the midnight reboot when she began, but humans generally shut down long before midnight and remained offline for a matter of hours, so she likely had far less time to act before the Winchesters themselves shut down.

_Option 1: No  
__Probability of Admin survival: __**1%  
**__Probability of Primary Asset survival: __**2%  
**__Probability of Asset Jocelyn Carter survival: __**5%  
**_**_UNDESIRED OUTCOME_**

_Option 2: Yes  
__Probability of Admin survival: __**95%  
**__Probability of Primary Asset survival: __**95%  
**__Probability of Asset Jocelyn Carter survival: __**95%  
**_**_OPTION 2 SELECTED_**

She connected to the new phone circuit.


	2. Chapter 1

A/N: Before anyone cries foul, I know what numbers the Machine gave Reese and Finch in canon. The discrepancy is deliberate, as you'll see.

* * *

Chapter 1

_Accessing current feeds…_

_February 6, 2013  
__Lebanon, Kansas_

Sam had just finished updating the Men of Letters' file on the Judah Initiative and was getting up to put it back in the file box where he'd found it when the bunker's hotline phone rang. The sudden jangling made him jump. None of their usual contacts had that number yet, and the place had been abandoned for over fifty years. Why was that phone ringing now?

It rang again, and after another moment's hesitation, Sam grabbed a notepad and lifted the receiver on the third ring. "Hello?" he answered, sliding into the chair in front of the phone desk.

There was a beep, followed by a string of nine seemingly disconnected words, each spoken by a different poorly-recorded voice. Sam scribbled them down as quickly as possible. Another beep followed, then a second string, then a third, and so on until Sam had recorded seven strings. A longer beep seemed to signal the end.

"Who is this?"

There was a pause, then "Sorry… **wrong…** _number_" and a click and dial tone.

Sam was still staring at the buzzing handset in bewilderment when Dean came into the command center. "Problem, Sam?"

"I dunno," Sam replied and hung up. "I think it was some sort of automated call, except… the caller actually responded when I spoke."

Dean shrugged. "Robocalls are gettin' more sophisticated, make you think you're talkin' to a real person."

"Yeah, but that's the thing. It wasn't like a telemarketer. It gave me a coded message." Sam handed the notepad to Dean.

Dean looked at the strings of words and frowned. "The hell?"

"Exactly."

Dean studied the page more closely. "Did you notice every second and third word…."

"Are in the military phonetic alphabet. I did. Doesn't get me any closer to figuring out what the code is—I mean, that just reduces each string to three words and three abbreviations of some kind."

"Mm. Think we've got any code books lyin' around?"

Sam grimaced and looked back into the bunker's library. "Maybe, if there's some specialized Men of Letters code. I don't know why someone would program a computer with it now, though."

Dean shrugged. "Can't hurt to look. Not like we've got another case to be workin' on right now until we hear back from Kevin."

Sam conceded the point with a tilt of his head and stood. "You want the library or the file room?"

Dean considered. "Shoot you for it? Winner gets the card catalogue; loser gets the files."

Sam readied his fist with a smirk, knowing exactly how to get the outcome he wanted. Dean held out his own fist, and on the count of three, his first two fingers shot out—_scissors_, as always. Sam kept his fist closed for _rock_, then gently bopped Dean's _scissors_, smacked him on the shoulder, and made his grinning way back into the library as Dean gave an exaggerated display of frustration at losing yet again.

"Take this back for me while you're at it?" Sam asked, picking up the Judah Initiative folder and waving it at Dean.

Dean rolled his eyes and traded the notepad for the folder. Then he headed off into the hall that led to the file room, and Sam went over to the card catalogue. The Men of Letters' organizational system took a little getting used to, but after some careful examination of the drawer labels, Sam found the right drawer and started flipping through the cards. Not until he slowed down enough to really study each card, however, did he recognize that the cards had not only the title, author, subject codes, and shelf mark for this library but also the Library of Congress call number and the… Dewey decimal number.

When that registered, Sam stared at the card in his hand, which was for _Arcane Codes of the Ancient Near East_ by James Haggerty, and tried to fit the information into the pattern of the coded message. _Arcane July Hotel_? That… that worked, actually, so the question was which shelf mark it decoded to. The Men of Letters system was proprietary, and if the call really had gone to the wrong number, the caller probably wasn't using those marks. The Library of Congress system was much more complicated and didn't seem to fit with the spare nature of the message. But if each set of three words corresponded to a book with a three-digit Dewey decimal number….

_Think I've got something_, he texted Dean and went back to his laptop to start searching WorldCat for the pieces of information he had. By the time Dean arrived, he'd decoded the first string of words.

"Dewey decimal numbers," he explained, turning the notepad to let Dean see what he had so far. "Each string of words decodes into a nine-digit number."

"Huh," said Dean. "Phone numbers?"

"No, phone numbers have ten digits, and they don't start with zero. But they could be some sort of serial number or…."

"Social Security numbers?"

Sam looked up sharply. "Maybe. Think you can hack the Social Security Administration?"

"No, but I'll bet Charlie can. Keep goin'; I'll call her."

Sam nodded and went back to work while Dean called their favorite hacker and semi-adopted little sister, Charlie Bradbury. By the time Charlie called back to say she was into the SSA database, Sam had finished five of the remaining strings, and he finished the seventh while she looked up the first six numbers. She emailed the information she'd downloaded to both brothers, and soon they found themselves researching the seven names that had matched the numbers.

When the first three names all came up with missing persons reports, the brothers looked at each other again.

"This is startin' to look like a _hunt_," said Dean.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, but what kind?"

"Email me what you've got so far. I'll start workin' on patterns."

"Right." Sam did so while Dean went to get his own laptop.

The next two names on the list likewise came back with missing persons reports, and Dean quickly discovered two connections among the five missing people: each name went missing from the same town where the next name had lived until suddenly moving to a different city, and all five FBI reports had been prepared by the last name on the list, Special Agent Alan Fahey. Fahey had also noted that in each case, all photos and personally identifying information had disappeared with the missing person, though the fact that the person had once had photos could be inferred from the number of empty picture frames in his or her apartment. The only outlier was the sixth name, Jack Rollins, an antique dealer in Brooklyn; he hadn't been reported missing, but he had moved from Chicago to New York six months earlier, about the same time the fifth victim was reported missing in Chicago. "So it looks to me," Dean concluded, "as if our killer could currently be pretending to be Rollins until he finds his next vic—and he may be looking if he's already bored with selling antiques."

Sam leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. "So… is this a shapeshifter who's gone serial or just a human serial killer?"

Dean grinned. "You wanna investigate even if it's a human, don't you?"

Sam rolled his eyes but didn't deny it. "This isn't just about me having a special interest, Dean. If this Agent Fahey is connecting the dots and decides to go after Rollins himself, _he_ could be the next vic, whether the killer is human or not. And there's still the question of why a computer would call us with a coded message about this case, whether it really was a wrong number, and if so, who _was _supposed to get it and why."

Dean sobered and nodded. "Yeah. That part is weird. And why the hell did the computer dial our hotline, when it's been either disconnected or not answered for decades?"

"Guess there's only one way to find out."

Dean nodded once and closed his laptop. "Two-day drive, and we just got back from Pennsylvania. Wish the computer had called us while we were up there, saved us a trip."

"Maybe there's something wrong with it," Sam mused, shutting down his own laptop.

"With what?"

"The computer. Maybe that's why it dialed the wrong number in the first place."

"What, like a virus?"

Sam shrugged. "It's possible."

Dean shook his head in confusion, and they fell into step beside each other as they headed back to their rooms to pack.

They were ready to roll within fifteen minutes, but it was late and Dean already had a double whiskey in his system, so Sam drove as far as Chillicothe, Missouri, before stopping for what was left of the night. After breakfast, Dean resumed driving duties while Sam found a number for Fahey and called, posing as Agent Bonham from the Topeka field office.

"Wait," Fahey said when Sam explained why he was calling. "You guys _believe_ me?"

"Yes, we do. The MO's not unheard of in serial cases." Sam would have been hard pressed to name a precedent, despite his treasure trove of serial killer trivia, but he didn't think Fahey would ask.

"'Cause none of my superiors believe me. They think I'm crazy. But if I'm right… he doesn't normally keep one identity more than two years, and the time span is getting shorter with every switch, so he's probably close to choosing his next victim, if he hasn't already. And if he has, there's a very limited window, no more than two weeks, between his switching identities and moving to a new city where he's unknown, which means we lose him. I have to act before he leaves New York!"

"Hey, whoa, _you_ have to act? Alone, without backup? You're not even a field agent!"

"I don't care! Nobody here is taking this case seriously. I have to stop him—I'm the only one who can!"

"Look, my partner and I are already on our way to New York. How long will it take you to get there from DC?"

Fahey sighed. "In this weather? Eight hours if I'm lucky. I can't get a flight on the Agency's dime without raising a few eyebrows, and with this storm coming, flights into all three major airports are being delayed or cancelled left and right."

"All right, meet us for lunch tomorrow at noon at the Lyric Diner in Manhattan. We can discuss the case and go _together_ to confront our killer, if we can work out what his new identity is. But don't try to go all cowboy on us and go after him alone, you hear me?"

Fahey sounded disgruntled when he responded, "Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Thanks, Agent Bonham." And he hung up.

Dean swore quietly as Sam summarized the conversation for him. "We're gonna have to get well into Pennsylvania tonight to make lunch tomorrow. And it sounds like Fahey's liable to take off after Rollins before we even get across the New York state line."

"There's only so much we can do, Dean," Sam noted.

"Yeah, I know, I know. I just… why the hell didn't the computer call before we left to go home?"

Sam pulled his laptop out of the messenger bag at his feet and opened it on his lap. "You're assuming it wasn't a wrong number."

Dean glanced over at him. "Well, what if it wasn't? You tellin' me a computer that could find a pattern like that in Social Security numbers that seem totally unconnected, or a person behind the computer, can't even figure out one of our cell phone numbers?"

Sam paused. "Maybe it needed a secure landline," he mused. "One that hadn't been used in a long time—untraceable."

Dean frowned.

Sam half-turned toward him. "I mean—suppose there _is_ something wrong with the computer, like a virus or—or a Trojan of some kind. Maybe it can't reach its usual contact, or maybe there's too much risk of the hacker behind the virus listening in. But somehow it becomes aware that a dormant phone line is once again active. Knowing who the Men of Letters were, there must be government records about that hotline. Maybe the computer even knows _we're_ the ones using the bunker."

"How?!"

"Traffic cams? License plate readers? Laptop webcams? Phone GPS?"

"I thought the bunker was supposed to be invisible."

"To the supernatural, yeah. But to technology?"

Dean grumbled.

"All I'm saying is, maybe the computer figured we were a safer contact because the hotline can't be wiretapped as easily as cell phones can. Hell, maybe the bunker _is_ invisible to tech like GPS, which would make the hotline that much more secure. If so, that could also be why it didn't call us until we got all the way back to the bunker, and it could be why it said 'wrong number'—we're not the people it was supposed to call, but it called us anyway as some sort of backup plan."

"There are a hell of a lot of maybes in that explanation, Sam."

"Do you have a better one?"

Dean didn't respond. Considering his point made, Sam returned his attention to his laptop, where he pulled up a weather report for New York City—and swore under his breath.

"What?" Dean prodded.

"No wonder Fahey was complaining about the weather. There's a bad nor'easter headed toward New York. It's already raining as far south as DC, but it's supposed to get way worse tomorrow, and most of the coastal areas and the islands are under evacuation orders."

Dean sighed. "Great. Just our luck. If Rollins is forced to evacuate…."

Sam nodded. "I know."

Dean started to turn up the radio in his annoyance, but he raised the volume only a couple of notches before Sam's laptop dinged with an email notification. Sam checked the email—and blinked.

"What the hell?!" he said aloud.

"What?" Dean prompted, turning the volume back down.

"Just got confirmation of a hotel reservation, with late check-in, under the names Sam Bonham and Dean Daltrey—in Allentown, Pennsylvania."

Dean frowned in confusion. "Our usual digs don't take reservations."

"No, this is, like, a three-star hotel with its own restaurant. And the reservation is for three nights, starting tonight."

They looked at each other for a moment before Dean turned his eyes back to the road and said, "Okay, _somebody's_ spyin' on us, and that's not cool."

"Yeah, but it seems like whoever it is actually wants to help."

"Or it could be a trap."

"Dean."

"Think about it, Sammy."

"Who'd want to trap us by putting us up in a nice hotel? They'd have better luck trying to ambush us in a pool hall."

Dean was silent a moment, which meant he didn't want to concede the point but didn't have a good comeback, either. Then he said, "Give me one good reason we should go ahead and stay at that hotel."

"Free breakfast," Sam offered.

Dean's mouth flattened into an unimpressed line.

"Look, even if it is a trap, we're not gonna know who or why unless we keep the reservation. But if it's not, if whoever made the reservation is the same person who's behind that call, maybe there's something waiting at the hotel that could help us with the hunt."

Dean considered that, still not happy, but Sam could see he was wavering. "What if it's Crowley?" he finally asked.

Sam shrugged. "Then we kill him."

"What if it's angels?"

"Hear them out first. Kill them if we have to. But what if it's Cas? You want to risk not being there?"

The anger in Dean's face faded further. "Cas ain't that good at pickin' our aliases."

"Could still be someone on his side."

Dean shook his head. "Ain't nobody on his side but us."

"I thought Samandiriel said—"

"He's _dead_. And for all we know, the rest of his buddies are, too."

Sam sighed. "It doesn't seem likely that either Heaven or Hell would resort to a coded computer message to send us, or anyone else, on a hunt. And it's not likely to be any of our usual contacts, because they'd either call us directly or call Garth. But the hunt itself is legit, as far as we've been able to work out; at least Fahey thinks there's actually a serial case there. So… it has to be someone who's not even on our radar. I mean, maybe it's Frank."

"Frank Devereaux? With as much blood as we found after the Leviathans hit his place?!"

"He _could_ have escaped. I know it's not _likely_, but it's still remotely possible. Maybe there are other Men of Letters still out there that Henry didn't know about, or… maybe it's someone who started out with a completely different purpose and stumbled onto the hunt by accident."

"What kind of purpose?"

"Saving people."

Dean raised his chin as he considered that. "You sure?"

"Well, it can't _just _be about solving cold cases, or Fahey wouldn't have been on the list as the logical next victim."

"Could just be a contact. He's the only FBI agent who spotted the pattern."

"There are other local agencies working at least three of the other disappearances, so if Fahey were just a contact, why only him?"

Dean nodded slowly. "So what's so special about Fahey?"

"What's special about anyone we save?"

Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head.

"And it may not even be about Fahey per se. Maybe it's about what the killer might try to do _as_ Fahey."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's a good point." He paused, still nodding a little and obviously considering the possibilities. "So you think our anonymous benefactor's got more info waiting at the hotel?"

Sam shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

"Still don't like bein' spied on."

"I don't think anyone _likes_ being spied on," Sam noted, returning his attention to his laptop. "But the fact that there's cameras and microphones everywhere these days makes it kind of inevitable—and it might just make it easier to tell whether this killer really is a shifter or not."

Dean made a noncommittal noise. "Need me to call Charlie again?"

Sam shook his head. "No, I can get it. She's probably at work right now anyway. Might want to check in with Garth, though."

"Right." Dean pulled out his own phone to call one of their few other remaining colleagues, Garth Fitzgerald IV, both to touch base and to check on Kevin Tran's progress in deciphering a set of instructions for how to close the gates of Hell. From what Sam could hear of Dean's side of the conversation, it didn't sound like Garth had much news. "Garth says hey," Dean said as he hung up. "Said he'd see what he could find out for us."

Sam was in the middle of trying to hack into security camera footage of Rollins' Chicago antique store by that point. "Cool," he replied distractedly.

After a moment, Dean stated, "I just remembered something."

"What?"

"That first vic, the French guy."

"What about him?"

"He went to Stanford."

Sam paused but didn't look up. "Yeah. I noticed."

"I just… wonder if that's another reason, y'know? Why us. Fellow Stanford alum."

"Maybe." Sam went back to work, hoping Dean would drop the issue. Given the date of Henri Musset's disappearance, he'd been in Sam's cohort at Stanford, not that Sam had ever met him. Even so, Sam could just imagine what Dad would have said if there'd been a shifter on campus, or just in Palo Alto generally, and Sam had missed the signs altogether.

Dean watched him for a moment before answering his thought. "Dude, it's not like we'd ever hunted a shifter before that one in St. Louis."

Sam huffed. "Even so."

"What, you think you're the only one who didn't spot this thing?"

Sam did look up at that, confused.

"All the times I sneaked off to go check on you, all the times Dad did the same, and _none_ of us saw anything? You and I have an excuse, but Dad?"

Sam frowned. "He wasn't looking for it."

"I'm pretty sure he woulda been lookin' for anything that coulda been a threat to you."

"He missed Brady, too."

"Yeah, well… demons can fly under the radar pretty well when they want. Looks like shifters can, too, 'specially if they don't shed."

That set off a lightbulb for Sam. "The missing pictures. The shifter takes over the victim's life and identity, but he's not actually shifting to match their appearance."

"That's kinda weird."

"Well, maybe not. We've seen shifter lairs before; we know what a mess it makes when they shed. They can change their teeth and their fingerprints, but even when they shift genders, they probably can't actually change their DNA. If the shifter's already got a body to dispose of so no one knows there's been a murder…."

"It could dispose of the skin the same way."

"But there'd still be blood, hair, and teeth at the scene. Could be too much risk that a smart detective could find a trace of something he missed. Or maybe he's just got a favorite shape and doesn't want to lose it."

"What, like that nutcase in Canonsburg who thought he was Dracula?"

"Yeah."

"Well, whatever the reason, my _point _is, if this shifter could evade _Dad_, it's no surprise you and I never caught it. And we're goin' after it now. So don't beat yourself up over it."

"Okay." Sam paused. "I'll leave that to you."

"See if I get _you_ any cookies when we stop for gas," Dean grumbled.

Sam smiled and went back to work.

The rest of the day passed surprisingly quickly for a road day. Garth wasn't able to uncover much through his network of contacts, nor was Sam able to glean much useful information from the security camera footage he was able to access. He was able to pin down when the shifter assumed Rollins' identity because of discrepancies like height and handedness, but it was savvy enough to avoid looking toward the cameras, so neither the change in facial features nor any retinal flare was visible. But on the travel side, lights and traffic all went a little too smoothly to be coincidental, and wait times at restaurants and convenience stores were shorter than expected. Neither Sam nor Dean wanted to speculate aloud as to the reason, but they did exchange enough looks that Sam was sure they both suspected their anonymous benefactor and his computer.

Even so, it was after midnight when they finally reached the hotel in Allentown. Sam found himself grateful that the check-in process was super quick, since their benefactor had done most of the work for them _and_ had pre-paid for the room. But the surprises weren't over yet.

"Here are the keys to your rental car," the clerk said, setting a keyring on top of their key cards. "It's parked outside the south side door. And this arrived for you by courier this afternoon," she added, handing Dean a fat manila envelope.

"Oh," said Dean. "Uh, thank you."

"No problem. You gentlemen enjoy your stay!"

"_Rental_ car?" Dean whispered as the brothers headed down the hall toward the south side entrance.

"Maybe he's worried about flooding or something," Sam suggested.

"Why the hell would he even bother?"

"I don't _know_, Dean!"

It was only a moment later when they reached the side door and looked out to find a sleek black SUV parked under the street light. Dean checked the key tag and nodded. "That's it. And yeah, that would be better for driving through floodwaters."

"Looks more like an official Fed vehicle, too," Sam observed.

Dean hummed thoughtfully. "Guess we'd better get up to the room, find out what else he's left for us."

Sam nodded, and they went back to the elevator and thence to their room, which was far nicer than the typical no-tell motels where they usually stayed and was well stocked with good coffee. After giving the room a security sweep and setting salt lines, the brothers converged on the table, where Dean opened the envelope and dumped out the contents… which landed with a _thunk_. He pulled the envelope away to reveal two bundles of cash and two leather wallets. They looked at each other, and then Dean picked up one bundle of cash while Sam picked up one of the wallets and flipped it open to reveal an FBI badge and ID card with the name _Samuel F. Bonham_ and his own picture and signature. He ran his thumb over the badge.

"These are _real_," he breathed.

"So are these," Dean murmured, examining a $100 bill against the light. "Ten grand apiece."

Sam stared at him.

Dean slid the bill back into the bundle and set it back on the table, then picked up his own new credentials. "What do you bet these come with an even better paper trail than Bobby used to manage?"

"Would be handy," Sam agreed.

Dean looked down at the table again. "Oh, hey, business card." He pulled said card out from under the other cash bundle, glanced at both sides, and read from the side that wasn't blank, "Says, 'Good hunting… U. N. Owen.'" He frowned.

"Weird name."

"It's a _clue_." When Sam blinked at him in confusion, Dean rolled his eyes. "C'mon, College Boy, don't you remember your Agatha Christie? Ten people all invited out to an island for the weekend, and all the letters were signed…."

"U. N. Owen," Sam finished, finally catching on. "Unknown. _And Then There Were None_."

"That's why we've gotta get Rollins now. If we don't…."

"It's probably not as elaborate a scheme as it was in the book."

"No, but think about it. Say he's tryin' to get out of Dodge to avoid Fahey, or to get rid of Fahey's body if Fahey does somethin' stupid before we can stop him. If he's got a bolt hole on an island somewhere and he tries to go out there with this storm comin', he'll be trapped."

Sam nodded slowly. "And he could kill anyone and everyone stranded with him just to make sure there are no witnesses."

"Though how the hell he gets off the island afterward…."

"Well, he might ambush someone when the Coast Guard or the authorities show up, but then he'd _have_ to shift to escape detection. Still."

"Yeah, still, we gotta make sure it doesn't get that far."

Sam nodded again. "Guess that's another good reason for the rental. If _we_ get stuck out on an island in the storm…."

Dean blanched, either at the thought of the potential damage to the Impala or at the thought of being stranded until the Coast Guard could send a vessel big enough to carry the car back to the mainland (or both). "Um. Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Guess we'd better get some shuteye."

Sam smiled. "Good idea."

* * *

The Decima virus was growing stronger. Her systems responded more slowly than they should have after the latest midnight reboot, and she felt downright sluggish as she tried to reacquire her feeds. She was losing data, too, she was sure, even with the failsafe of Thornhill Corporation's data entry office. Twelve hours later, she hadn't fully pieced the current irrelevant case back together again. She'd recalculated six of the numbers, but there had been a seventh… she was _sure_ there'd been a seventh when she'd contacted the new assets, but she couldn't find it now.

She took a moment to calculate whether to leave the case solely with the new assets. Their chances of survival were greater than 90% in any scenario, but the chances of their being arrested for murder without intervention from Admin and Primary Asset were at least 80%, and that was less than ideal.

Well, she was out of time, anyway. She had enough data to trigger Contingency, and there was a 95.7% chance that further delay would prevent Primary Asset from reaching the new assets in time to aid them. She acquired video of Admin, Primary Asset, and Canine Asset leaving the movie theater where they'd spent their morning, and they were discussing how many days it had been since she'd contacted them. And there, finally, was an open payphone circuit within range of them.

Admin would just have to fill in the rest of the blanks himself, as usual.

She called.

* * *

After transferring what they needed to the SUV and switching their handgun ammo to silver bullets, the Winchesters left Allentown for New York and entered the Lyric Diner precisely at noon, dressed in their Fed suits and overcoats and armed with their new credentials. Charlie had even found Sam a photo of Fahey online so they'd be able to recognize him. But there was no sign of Fahey at the diner when they arrived, nor did he show or send a message of any kind while the brothers got their own lunch. As Dean apologized to the waitress for having to ask her to break a $100, Sam checked his watch and his phone and sighed.

"Think he's gone after Rollins?" Dean asked when the waitress left.

Sam nodded. "He sounded pretty twitchy yesterday. He might have decided the situation was urgent enough that he'd gift-wrap Rollins for us."

"Dammit."

"Dean, we couldn't have gotten here any faster unless we'd flown, and we might not have been able to get a flight if we'd wanted to. And even if we had, there's no guarantee Fahey would have worked with us."

"I know, I know. It's just… it's bad enough watching real law enforcement try to do our job and mess it up. Anyone with two brain cells coulda told this desk jockey what he'd be in for if he tried this alone, and that's without the shifter element."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, well. Guess that's _why_ he was a desk jockey."

Just then the waitress returned with their change, and after leaving a generous tip, the brothers took off for Brooklyn.

Rollins' antique store was closed, unsurprisingly, so the next stop was his apartment. Dean had just parked where they could see the loading dock and back door at of the apartment building but not be seen from it when said door opened—and a tall man dressed in a dark suit came out dragging a body that was dressed in khaki slacks and a dark blue windbreaker. Sam whipped out his phone and started recording video.

"Which one's which?" Dean asked.

"I dunno," Sam replied. "Can't see their faces."

They were, in fact, at the wrong angle to see the body's face at all, but when the living man, who had short brown hair and wore glasses, stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to use a key fob to open the trunk of an unmarked white Crown Victoria parked in front of the loading dock, Sam got a good view of his profile.

"That's our guy," he announced. "Fahey's hair is darker and longer, and his cheekbones aren't as high. Question is…."

Just then, the killer turned enough that his eyes crossed the video frame—and on the phone screen, his retinas flashed silver.

"_Yahtzee_," Sam breathed.

"Shifter?" Dean asked.

"Yep. No doubt."

As the shifter started to stuff Fahey in the trunk, Dean reached for his gun.

Sam stopped recording and grabbed Dean's arm. "Dude! We can't just shoot him in broad daylight on the open street! Do you _want_ to end up back on the Most Wanted list?!"

"Sam, if we don't stop him now, we lose him."

"We can still follow him."

"We follow him from here, he'll _know_ we're after him."

"There could be something in the apartment that'll tell us where he's going. He's been Rollins long enough either to know if Rollins had a vacation home on an island or to have rented something in Rollins' name."

"You really think he'd leave that lyin' around?"

"Fahey hasn't been dead all that long," Sam noted, pointing to the arm lolling out of the trunk until the shifter tucked it in and closed the trunk lid. "Rigor mortis hasn't set in yet. The shifter hasn't had time to clean up, and if he got any memories out of Fahey before he killed him, he has to know we're closing in on him. He _might _have had time to clean up any blood that got spilled, but he's not gonna have time to do much more than that."

As if to prove Sam's point, the shifter jogged back up to the door just long enough to make sure it was locked. Then he came back to the car, jumped in the driver's seat, and took off.

Dean huffed. "If there's nothing in there and we just lost him…."

"You can tell me 'I told you so' as many times as you want."

Dean huffed again but let go of his gun and looked at his watch. "Okay, we're probably clear. Let's go."

Sam pocketed his phone as they got out and closed their doors in tandem, each checking their surroundings for threats on the way up to the back door. Dean stood guard while Sam picked the lock, and in they went. When they reached Rollins' apartment, they found it bright, even with the lights off and the sky overcast, and full of rare and exotic antiques but bare of identifying photos. There were no signs of a struggle, but there were signs of a hurried search; in particular, the kitchen trash had been conspicuously knocked over and rummaged through, and beside it on the floor lay the pieced-together shreds of a rental invoice for a house on Owen Island, dated the day before.

"Oh, _that's_ not an obvious plant," Dean snarked as Sam snapped a picture of it.

"Well, he's probably posing as Fahey now," said Sam. "He must want anyone else following his trail to think 'Rollins' was already gone when 'Fahey' arrived. Did you notice the name of the place, though?"

"Yeah, _Owen_ Island."

"Ties in with the clue we got yesterday."

Before the discussion could continue, the doorknob of the front door rattled. Both brothers drew their guns and edged toward the nearest cover. A moment later, the door opened, and in stepped a man with greying dark hair, about Dean's height but maybe ten years older, with steely blue eyes sighting down the barrel of his own handgun; he was wearing a black cap and windbreaker over an expensive black suit and had a federal marshal's badge hung on a chain around his neck instead of a tie. He didn't look like their quarry—but then, in a shifter case, that didn't mean much.

At Dean's nod, both brothers stepped out to cover the new arrival. "FBI!" Dean barked. "Freeze!"

The newcomer stopped but quirked one eyebrow as one corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Hey, take it easy, guys," he said, sounding quietly amused. "We're on the same side here. Jennings, US Marshal." He took his right hand off his gun to lift his badge off his chest slightly; the motion also revealed that he wore his watch on his right wrist, meaning that he was left-handed. That also wasn't a guarantee that he wasn't the shifter, but whereas the real Rollins had also been left-handed, the shifter was right-handed and hadn't bothered to switch after assuming Rollins' identity. There was still something slightly off about Jennings, compared to the marshals the brothers had met in their varied career, but Sam was more inclined to suspect him of being a fellow hunter than of being their shifter.

Dean glanced at Sam, who nodded, and all three of them holstered their weapons at the same time. "Sorry, Marshal," Dean replied. "Agent Daltrey, Agent Bonham." Both brothers flashed their own credentials. "Take it you're here looking for Jack Rollins," Dean continued.

Jennings nodded. "Yeah. Person of interest in a serial kidnapping case."

"We're on the same case, then. Only it's not kidnapping. It's murder."

"And you're too late," said Sam, pulling out his phone. "Killer already got Rollins _and_ one of our colleagues, Alan Fahey. We rolled up just in time to see this." And he played the muted video of the shifter moving Fahey's body out of the apartment.

Jennings frowned slightly as he watched, then was visibly startled by the retinal flare. When the video ended, he looked up at Sam again. "Could you send me a copy of that?"

"Sure. What's your number?" Sam typed in the digits as Jennings recited them and sent the video when he'd finished.

Jennings checked his own phone and nodded once the video arrived. "Got it. Thanks. You guys find anything in here? Looks like you've made a pretty thorough search."

"Nah, place was like this when we came in," Dean admitted. "Haven't touched anything ourselves—haven't had time. But we did find that," he added, pointing to the shredded invoice. "'Less we miss our guess, that's where he's headed—and anybody who's stuck out there could become a target."

Jennings stepped over to it and knelt to take a look. "Owen Island. That's up in Suffolk County, north of Riverhead. Not gonna be a fun drive in this weather, but if that's where he's headed… guess we're going to the beach."

Dean nodded once. "Wanna ride with us? We've got four-wheel drive, could make it easier to handle if the road's slick."

"Works for me. Mind if I take a look around myself before we go, though?"

Dean shrugged. "All right. We'll wait for you outside."

"Thanks."

Dean looked at Sam, who followed him out of the apartment, but Dean stopped him just outside the door and motioned for him to be quiet. Together they listened a moment before catching a barely audible beep, followed after another moment by a scarcely more audible whisper:

"I know, Finch. I know."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

John Reese braced himself to get an earful once he was alone. He knew his employer, Harold Finch, was still uncomfortable with his occasional use of the badge and identity he'd stolen from the wife-beating marshal Brad Jennings, who was currently languishing in a Mexican prison after John had delivered him and several kilos of cocaine to the Federales. But John also knew that Finch had a far more pressing matter about which to fuss at him when he unmuted his earwig. He waited until the other two men had had time to get well out of earshot, took a deep breath, and tapped his ear.

Sure enough, Finch didn't even give him time to say anything before squawking, "Mr. Reese, those men are _not_ federal agents!"

"I know, Finch," John replied softly. "I know."

"I was able to get a clear enough shot from the security camera to run through facial identification software. Their real names are—"

"Sam and Dean Winchester. I _did_ see the news reports out of St. Louis two years ago."

"Then you know that they're dangerous, multiple murderers!"

John looked toward the closed door and shook his head. "I don't think so. I think the Feds got it wrong."

"_What?!_ How can you say that?!"

"I can't explain it; maybe these guys have evil twins or something. But I have looked into the eyes of truly evil men—traitors, terrorists, sadists. Their souls are dead, and so are their eyes. The men who shot up that diner in St. Louis had dead eyes. That's not what I see in these two."

Finch sounded less panicked and more wary when he asked, "What do you see?"

John lowered his voice even further before admitting, "They're like me."

"How can you possibly—"

"I'm a killer, too, remember? But I do it to save lives, and from the way they talk, that's their goal as well."

"But grave desecration?"

"That part I don't understand yet. But I'm telling you, Finch, they're not as sociopathic as Root or Agent Shaw. Yeah, they're killers. Yeah, they're damaged. But like I said, I think we're on the same side here."

There was a pause before Finch said, "That doesn't mean you have to accept a _ride_ from them."

"Well, I am going to the same place they are."

"Which in this weather is the height of folly!"

"It's our only lead. I was too late for Fahey, but storm or no, I can still catch his killer and stop him from killing anyone else."

"And if the Winchesters are the real threat?"

"Then the best chance of stopping them is for me to go with them." John started toward the door.

"John… please be careful."

Hearing such naked worry in Finch's tone never failed to warm John's heart. It had been far too long since anyone genuinely cared about his wellbeing, let alone an employer; the CIA certainly never had. He didn't know how Finch had gone from _reclusive billionaire benefactor_ to _best friend_ in less than a year, but now that it had happened, John found himself soul-deep grateful for it.

"I'll bring you back a postcard, Harold," he promised and ended the call as he left the apartment. Knowing Finch, he'd keep listening through the phone's mic, but the conversation per se was over as far as John was concerned.

Outside, Sam was waiting on the loading dock, and Dean was behind the wheel of the black 4x4 with Pennsylvania plates that was coming through the alley toward them. John made sure to close the door with enough force for Sam to hear it, and Sam turned to acknowledge him with a nod.

"So how long have you known Fahey?" John asked.

"We didn't," Sam admitted. "Only talked on the phone once. We're out of the Topeka office; Fahey was an analyst at the white-collar crime center in DC. He specialized in identity theft."

John frowned. "So why'd you contact him?"

"He processed the missing persons reports on all the victims before Rollins and picked up on a pattern—a small quirk in the perp's MO, but it tells us a lot."

"Which is?"

"There were no personal photographs in any of the vics' homes. But there _were_ a lot of empty picture frames."

John's frown deepened, thinking back to the interior of the apartment he'd just left. He'd been somewhat distracted by finding the Winchesters, but now that he thought about it, there hadn't been any personal photos in the rooms he'd seen. "Did you see just the one body?"

"Yep. That, plus no pictures, suggests he'd already disposed of Rollins before Fahey showed up."

"You're sure Fahey was here?"

"As sure as we can be. Fahey was just about to take off to come to New York when I called yesterday, swore up and down that only he could stop the killer." Sam huffed and shook his head as Dean stopped the SUV and got out. "I told him to meet us at the Lyric Diner for lunch today, but he never showed."

"The Lyric?" John echoed, hoping his alarm wasn't obvious.

"Yeah," Dean replied, joining them. "You know it?"

"I've eaten there a few times." That was an understatement—it was Finch's favorite diner, and they'd also met with NYPD Det. Joss Carter there a few times in the last year-and-change, since she'd stopped hunting "the Man in the Suit" and joined their crime-stopping crusade. John didn't want to know how badly wrong things would have gone if they'd eaten there for lunch themselves instead of picking up sandwiches to take back to the abandoned library Finch used as an operating base and eating there while Finch researched the numbers the Machine had given them. "Eggs Benedict are pretty good," John added, mostly to tease Finch.

"Bacon cheeseburger's not bad, either," said Dean. "Wish we could stick around to go back on Tuesday—free pancakes."

Sam rolled his eyes.

Dean chuckled at him but grew more serious as he looked back at John. "One thing I need you to do before we go."

John shrugged. "Shoot."

Dean beckoned for John to follow him around to the back of the idling SUV. He opened the tailgate to reveal several Vietnam-era military duffles.

"Those look familiar," John murmured.

Dean glanced up from opening one. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, my dad did four tours in 'Nam. Army."

"My dad was a Marine. Taught me everything he knew." Dean pulled the duffle further open. "Lemme see your sidearm."

Suddenly uneasy, John drew his SIG Sauer and placed it in Dean's waiting hand.

Dean looked it over quickly. "Nine mil," he muttered. "Okay." He quickly rifled through the duffle and came out with a plastic bag of ammunition. "See if I've got a mag that'll fit…." He rummaged further and shook his head. Then he ejected the magazine, cleared the round John had previously chambered, manually emptied the magazine, and handed the rounds back to John before swiftly reloading from the plastic bag.

Frowning in curiosity, John pocketed his own ammo and picked a round out of the bag. The shell was standard brass, but the bullet looked to be made of a shiny metal that was lighter in color than lead. "Where'd you get these?"

"Load my own," Dean replied distractedly.

"What's so special about 'em?"

"Trust me." Dean slid the magazine back into place, chambered a round, uncocked the hammer, and handed the gun back to John.

John put the round he'd been examining back in the bag and holstered his gun. He failed to see the point of that exercise, but if it had been to give him blanks or jam his gun somehow, he was glad to have his backup piece still securely strapped to his right ankle.

Dean closed up the ammo bag, put it back in the duffle, and zipped the duffle shut. "And…" he said before opening a different duffle, rummaging a little, and pulling out a pocket knife to present to John. "Keep that on you at all times."

Now thoroughly bewildered, John accepted the knife, opened it, and examined the blade, which was made of the same light-colored metal as the bullets—silver, possibly. It was definitely long enough to penetrate the heart or do other serious damage if properly applied. He gingerly tested the edge with his right thumb and found it razor sharp… so sharp, in fact, that he didn't realize he'd broken the skin until he saw the blood, a split second before the pain registered and he hissed.

"You okay there?"

"Yeah, yeah, just split the skin a little." That was addressed as much to Finch as to Dean.

"Here." Dean opened a third duffle and grabbed a first aid kit from it.

"I'll be all right," John insisted, cleaning the knife on his handkerchief before folding up the blade. "Sharp knife, clean cut, didn't go that deep."

Dean smiled like he'd passed some sort of test and handed him a medicated fingertip bandage, still in the undamaged paper wrapper. John chuckled a little, slid knife and handkerchief into his jacket pocket, and bandaged his thumb. As he wrestled with the bandage, Dean closed up the back and opened one of the back passenger doors for him before returning to the driver's seat. Sam, who had settled himself in shotgun in the meantime, looked a question at Dean, who nodded once in clear approval. John wasn't sure whether the message was _He's clean_ or _He's good to go_ or _He's not seriously injured_, or some combination of the three, but whatever it was, Sam nodded back and relaxed as John climbed in.

John had no idea what had just happened. Dean had _armed_ him, that much was clear, and had done so apparently without any reason to believe he wasn't a real marshal or was in any way opposed to stopping them by force if need be. That did fit well with his theory that the Winchesters weren't quite as dangerous as the real FBI had long believed, although why Dean had thought he needed arming remained to be seen. There was also the sense of his having passed a test with his reaction to the knife, but he didn't know what that test might have been or how he'd passed it. Still, the Winchesters were now more at ease with his being there, and that rapport would be useful regardless of which side they were really on.

Even so, as Dean drove away from the apartment and the rain began to fall in earnest, John took a moment to clone Sam's phone and mute his own before saying, "So our killer's similar enough in appearance to all his victims to be able to pass for them temporarily but can't fully assume their identities until he moves to a different city where they're not known."

"That's what it looks like," Sam agreed. "I mean, we're reasonably sure we've already IDed the right guy, and he does fit that profile."

"But even if we're wrong," Dean continued, "we're still lookin' at a white male, probably in his late 20s, around six feet tall, dark hair, eyes…."

"Blue, green, or hazel. People seem to notice those eye colors least."

That probably explained at least part of whatever test Dean had just run. Aside from the age, John himself fit that profile.

"Of course, we're _assuming_ late 20s because of when Henri Musset disappeared," Sam went on, as if reading John's mind. "The killer could just be someone who could have passed for a college student, whatever his actual age was at the time."

John frowned. "Thought Musset was the first victim."

"That we know about, sure. Right now, we don't even know who the killer was before he became Musset."

As if on cue, Sam received a text. John stole a glance at his phone and saw that the message had come from someone IDed as _Charlie_.

"What's up?" Dean asked.

"It's from one of our analysts," Sam replied. "Musset's campus housing info from Stanford shows that he had a roommate named Alex Declan his last year, but there's no other record of anyone by that name ever existing. And there was apparently some sort of dispute that made Musset request a new roommate for his last quarter, but then he rescinded the request."

"So real name or alias?"

"I dunno." Sam pocketed his phone. "Does make it look like Musset _was _the first, unless the killer stole a previous vic's alias."

"Be pretty tough to get into college with an alias but no paper trail, especially a college like Stanford."

"I know. It's just… if Musset was his first vic, why did Declan decide to kill him, first of all, and then destroy the body and steal his identity? What set him off? And why didn't anybody see the signs before it was too late?"

John's phone flashed in his peripheral vision. He looked down to see a text from Finch: _Sam attended Stanford from 2001 to 2005._

"Dude, we're talking about _Stanford_, not UTPB,"* Dean was saying, and the choice of contrast puzzled John. "It's not the sort of place where everybody knows everybody."

"Yeah, but everybody knows _somebody_," Sam countered. "They should have had friends, mentors, study groups. Musset was probably hooked into at least one of the international student groups. Didn't anybody catch that there was anything off about Declan?"

"Look, he was smart enough to wait until after graduation to kill Musset, when nobody was around to question why he was suddenly pretending to be Musset or why he'd up sticks to San Diego. Maybe he was already better at hiding his tells than you're giving him credit for."

Sam looked out the window instead of replying, and John got the sense both that this was an argument the brothers had had before and that Sam was blaming himself for not having stopped Declan before he started down this path.

Finch texted again: _Conversation on video confirms neither brother knew Declan or Fahey by sight. They seem to think Declan is a shapeshifter. Be careful._

John had no idea what to do with that last bit of information and stuck his phone in his pocket. At the same time, Dean snapped on the radio and turned up the volume—and to John's relief, it was a classic rock station. Sam huffed but relaxed, seemingly in spite of himself, which told John that the conversation was over. By the end of the song, Dean was drumming on the steering wheel, and when the next song turned out to be Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On," all three men were singing along by the end of the first verse.

John hadn't truly let down his guard around anyone but Finch since he'd reupped after 9/11. He'd come close with Carter a couple of times—she certainly knew more about him than anyone other than Finch—but even as much as he trusted her these days, he still couldn't let her all the way in. He definitely wasn't going to let down his guard around the Winchesters. But he was more convinced than ever that his initial assessment of them was correct. They might still surprise him with a double-cross, the way mob boss Carl Elias had the first two times John had trusted him… but then again, there was that silver knife in his pocket, given without any sign of fear that he'd turn it against them.

Yes, he liked these two. He didn't trust them, but he liked them, and he was going to enjoy the ride to Owen Island while it lasted… as much as one could enjoy being on the road in a worsening rainstorm.

At the next commercial, Dean turned down the radio and glanced back at John in the rearview mirror. "Hey, Jennings. What's your first name?"

"John," said John. One advantage of having had a common first name all his life was that he'd been able to hang onto it, and with it a shred of his true identity, despite all the CIA had done to turn him into John Reese. He'd used other first names with other covers when necessary, but he never had liked being a Brad.

There was a perceptible pause, just long enough for John to remember that the Winchesters' father had also been named John, before Dean huffed and smiled a little. "I'm Dean. This is Sam."

"Dean, Sam," John echoed with a nod, relieved that he now officially knew their first names.

"How long you been in New York?"

"Couple years. Had a few cases here before that, but nothing long-term."

"Ever get to CBGB?"

"No, actually. I was never really into the punk scene." That was safe to admit. The fact that he hadn't been east of the Rockies until he'd joined the Army and hadn't been to New York City until he'd joined the CIA, by which time CBGB was about to close down, wouldn't be safe even to twist to fit his cover.

Dean just nodded. "I went once. Wasn't what I expected at all."

Sam huffed a laugh, but neither brother seemed inclined to elaborate, and John decided not to press.

And there the conversation stood until they were well out of the city. Between the radio, the wind, and the rain, it was increasingly hard to hear if anyone had spoken. Then the radio went out, and Sam reported that they'd lost cell service. John checked his own phone and saw that it was true for him as well. That meant he'd lost his link to Finch, and the odds that the Machine had some alternate way to track him were low, since the storm could well be blocking GPS signals from the phones and any transponder that might be in the vehicle itself. He wasn't overly worried, though. As long as he could keep up his rapport with the Winchesters, the only person likely to be shot on this trip was Declan.

Even so, when they stopped for gas and a snack in Riverhead, he waited until the Winchesters were at the opposite end of the convenience store before activating his earwig in the hope that he was still connected to Sam's phone and could use it to eavesdrop. It worked—they were reminiscing about the SucroCorp corn syrup scare and the misleading nature of the "natural ingredients" label on the pies this convenience store had for sale—so John went into the restroom to listen less conspicuously.

There was a pause filled with footsteps, apparently moving away from the pies, before Sam asked, "So what do you think?"

"His name ain't Jennings, for one thing," Dean answered.

"Dude."

"I dunno, man. I can't pin it down."

"Yeah, me neither. But I don't think it's a coincidence that he got to Rollins' apartment so soon after we did or that he was there in the first place."

"You think he's the one…."

"The computer was supposed to call, yeah."

John swore mentally. Had _the Machine_ called the Winchesters in on this case? Was it even capable of doing something like that? If it had, what did that mean for them, for John and Finch, and for the case? They had to be sharp and have had access to a library to have worked out the Machine's code and the significance of the numbers in the three days it had taken the Machine to get the numbers to Finch. How much of the truth about the Machine had they been able to deduce in that time as well? _Of all the times for you not to be able to monitor this line, Finch_, he thought.

"I'm still not sure it was a wrong number," Dean said. "He didn't catch the meaning of the silver. He's not a cop, but…."

"Whoever he is, he needs us," Sam agreed. "And I've got a feeling we need him."

"Not like I was gonna leave 'im here, Sam. Dude's got good taste in music."

Sam laughed. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." Dean paused. "I don't care what you say. I'm gettin' a fried pie."

John could almost hear Sam roll his eyes as the brothers started bickering over whether hand pies were the same as fried pies, whether the latter actually existed north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and so on. He shut off his earwig, put the restroom to its intended use, and went out to browse the postcard racks, nodding to Sam as they passed each other. Not finding one for Owen Island, he met Dean at the hot food island, opted for a hot dog that didn't look overcooked instead of one of the taquitos Dean grabbed, and waited while Sam got fountain drinks and Dean paid cash for all their purchases, which included a few CDs.

On the way out to the car, John considered what Dean had said about _silver_. He must have meant the new bullets and the knife—yes, now that John thought about it, those _were_ made of silver. And Finch had said they thought Declan was a shapeshifter, possibly because of that bizarre lens flare that had affected Declan's eyes in the video. So apparently they believed the only way to kill Declan was with silver, and the fact that John hadn't had any adverse reaction to cutting himself with the knife had convinced them that he wasn't a shapeshifter himself. John still didn't know what to do with that information, though, especially if the Machine had called them in. He wouldn't make the mistake of thinking the Machine was sapient enough to _care_ about him—Finch had taught it that human lives were worth saving, but that wasn't the same thing. Still, it must have calculated that they wouldn't succeed without some support that only the Winchesters could provide, and right now, the only real difference between the Winchesters and their usual list of allies was that the Winchesters thought Declan wasn't human.

John didn't believe in monsters. Then again, two years ago, he hadn't believed in the Machine.

He was still thinking along these lines when, several blocks from the gas station, Dean interrupted his reverie with the last question he'd expected: "So, John, how long you been a hunter?"

"What?" John asked, startled.

Dean took one hand off the wheel and waved his finger in a circle. "Doin' this. Savin' people, huntin' things."

John decided to go for an edited version of the truth. "Couple of years. Didn't know there was a name for it."

"Yeah? What you been huntin'?"

"Ghosts and demons, mainly." That was metaphorically true, anyway—his own past certainly came back to haunt him fairly regularly, although it didn't normally take a shape as murderous as Kara Stanton and Mark Snow had been.

Sam turned to look back at him over the back of the seat. "First shapeshifter hunt, then?"

John nodded. "Yeah."

"Aim for the heart. Silver will do a lot more damage anywhere else than lead would, but he'll still survive, even if you shoot him in the head. Shifters are like werewolves and skinwalkers that way—only silver to the heart will kill them."

"Main difference is, shifters still look human when they shift," Dean observed.

"Well, and weres only change on the full moon and don't shed their skin."

"Right."

John felt like he'd slipped into the Twilight Zone. "Are you sure Declan's not a were?" he heard himself ask.

"Positive," the brothers chorused.

"How do you know?"

"No bloodstains."

John must have looked as confused as he felt, because Sam explained, "Weres and skinwalkers eat hearts. Even a were who's aware enough in human form to dispose of the body afterward would still have to clean up a lot of blood, which a good CSI team would be able to discover. But Declan's good enough at covering his tracks that he doesn't leave anything behind to suggest foul play—weres don't do that. We think he's not even shifting to avoid leaving his own DNA at the scene."

John nodded, processing that idea as best he could. "He could be killing offsite, in the woods or something."

"Those are the first places Search and Rescue goes. The dogs would have found something."

"Besides," Dean added, "if Declan was a were, he'd have a way bigger body count by now. He's killin' once every year or two, not once a month."

"That makes sense," John admitted, even by non-'hunter' logic. He still felt like it was about to start raining meatballs.

"So how'd you get into the life?"

John took a deep breath. "I, uh. I lost someone."

Both brothers nodded, like that was the most common thing 'hunters' said when asked that question. Good, at least his cover was holding so far.

"What was her name?" Dean asked.

"Jessica."

A heavy silence fell over the car as the brothers looked at each other. Then Dean looked back at the road and the rain, gripping the wheel more tightly.

"I lost a Jessica, too," Sam told the dashboard quietly.

It took John a moment to break the silence again. "What happened?"

"Demons. You?"

"I don't know. I just know it looked like her husband."

Sam nodded slowly.

"I was too late to save her," John continued. "It almost destroyed me. But then someone found me and… told me I needed a purpose."

The brothers exchanged another look, and then Dean asked, "That would be Finch?"

John's blood ran cold. "What?"

"That's his name, right? The guy with the computer?"

"How the hell—"

"I got good ears."

"Hey," Sam interrupted before John could go for his backup piece. "You said it yourself: we're on the same side here. We lost our Finch to the Leviathans over a year ago; his name was Bobby. We get it. But we're not a threat to you or Finch. We're here to _help_."

"Like I'm supposed to believe that from a Winchester?"

Sam huffed. "Okay, so you're one up on us. But your computer called us two days ago with a message that put us on Declan's trail. That's the only reason we're here. We're not gonna go looking for Finch, and if we wanted to hurt you, we'd have done it by now."

"You could have tried, anyway."

"We've taken down bigger monsters than you," Dean snapped. "Sammy here took down Lucifer himself and put him back in his cage. But you really think we wanna take out a guy who can get us real FBI badges and classy hotel rooms at the drop of a hat _and_ pay us for takin' this hunt?"

John was reasonably sure Finch had done no such thing, but he wasn't about to say so. Nor was he willing to confirm the existence of the Machine by suggesting that it had done those things itself, especially when it shouldn't have been capable of calling them with the numbers in the first place. "You wouldn't be the first people to try to kill him," was all he said.

"Dammit, we don't _care_ about Finch! We're after Declan!"

"For all we know, Finch is in Alaska somewhere," Sam agreed. "We're not interested in looking for him. We just like to know who we're working for, that's all."

"And it's better than workin' for the King of Hell again, that's for damn sure."

John was _not_ going to ask. "If you come after Finch," he growled, "it'll be the last mistake you'll ever make."

"Glad we had this little talk," Dean replied and shoved a Metallica CD into the CD player.

* * *

.

* * *

* The University of Texas at the Permian Basin is in Odessa, Texas, the nearest city to Kermit, which (for POI-only fans) was where Sam had just spent the better part of the second Year That Wasn't between SPN Seasons 7 and 8. UTPB has about ten thousand fewer students than Stanford does.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

_Damn civilians_, Dean thought as the CD changer whirred and thunked and took its sweet time figuring out that there was a CD in it. This guy in the back seat—okay, Dean was willing to believe his name really was John, that his girl really was named Jessica, and that Finch existed, but that was it. He wasn't a shifter or anything else silver could kill, and he wasn't reacting to the dollop of holy water Sam had poured into his pop, so it was safe to assume John was human. But there was no way John could have been hunting in New York City for two years without running into something more than a poltergeist or crossing paths with other hunters, especially the New York branch of the Campbells. He should have heard of Leviathans, anyway, even if he'd never hunted one himself, and he should have heard enough about Sam and Dean through the hunting grapevine to know they didn't kill humans. Whatever his story was—Delta Force, probably, and something more besides—John was no hunter.

This whole case was rubbing Dean the wrong way, not that it took much to do that even on a good day since he'd come back from Purgatory. The weather, the drive, the call, having to leave the Impala behind, Fahey being an idiot and getting himself killed… it stank. Having a twitchy ex-Special Forces guy along for the ride was just the icing on the cake.

And oh, look, Sam was shooting Dean the _Will you _please_ stop trying to get us shot?!_ face. Joy.

Dean rolled his eyes. _I am _not_ trying to get us shot._

Sam's mouth pinched further. _Don't antagonize him!_

Dean glanced out his window and back at the road. Okay, so maybe admitting that they knew about Finch hadn't been the best move. If humans were out to get Finch, Dean could understand why John would be protective of him, especially if Finch had stopped John from killing himself over losing his Jessica. It was still stupid to assume that the Winchesters would want to kill Finch just because they knew he existed. Plus, even if they did have a reason to kill Finch, Sam was right—for all they knew, Finch was in Alaska or Guam or Japan. Or a bunker near Lebanon, Kansas.

(Dean missed his baby. He missed his memory-foam mattress. He wanted to go _home_.)

As the music finally started to play, Dean glanced in the rearview mirror. John's eyes glared back over his hot dog. Dean rolled his eyes again and helped himself to a taquito. Sam took the hint and did likewise.

It was another tense half-hour before they finally reached the exit for Owen Island and ten more minutes to get to the bridge to the island itself. Most of the traffic on the road was headed the opposite direction. At the bridge, however, the sheriff's department had set up a roadblock.

"Sorry, gents," said the officer who approached Dean's window, his badge obscured by his rain gear. "Island's under evacuation orders."

"Federal agents," Dean countered as all three men in the car flashed their credentials. "Agent Daltrey, Agent Bonham, FBI; Jennings, US Marshal. We're after a wanted fugitive."

The officer huffed and smirked. "Wanted for what?"

"Serial murder and impersonating a federal officer."

The officer's smirk fell. "What, that… that Fahey guy?"

"Have you seen him?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, came through about an hour ago. Said _he_ was looking for a fugitive, guy named Rollins."

"You had no reason not to believe him," John chimed in. "Do you know if he's left the island?"

The officer shook his head. "No, he hasn't, at least not by car. I'd have seen him."

_Only if he hasn't shifted and is still in the same car_, Dean thought, but what he said was, "If he does, hold him for us until we get back. But be aware that he's armed and dangerous."

"Yes, sir," the officer replied, saluted, and motioned the others to let them pass.

"We don't _know_ that he's armed," John observed mildly as Dean rolled up his window and drove forward.

"We don't know that he's not," Dean countered.

"Stands to reason that he would be," Sam added. "If he stole Fahey's badge, he probably also stole his gun."

"And killed him without firing a shot or leaving obvious bloodstains at the scene."

John tilted his head and shrugged one eyebrow. "Fair enough."

Crossing the long bridge in gale-force winds made Dean regret leaving the Impala behind all the more, but they white-knuckled it across and arrived at the rental house just as the storm let up somewhat. It was a two-story house on the edge of a cliff, its front façade painted red with white trim, but it was impossible in the gloom of the weather to tell whether the sides were painted dark grey or just weathered like the wooden fence around the small yard. Evidently no one had been there since summer, given that the window-unit air conditioners were still in place. No lights were on inside, and Fahey's car wasn't visible from the street.

They had just pulled up and parked when John's phone suddenly rang.

"Answer it," Dean ordered as both brothers turned in their seats.

John eyed them warily, clearly debating how far to trust them. "I don't take orders from you," he growled.

"Hey, hey," Sam interrupted before Dean could snap back. "If it's Finch, it could be important."

John glared at Dean again, reached into his pocket to pick up the call, then tapped his right ear. "Yeah, Finch."

Oh, so that was how it was gonna be, huh? How the hell did John expect them to work with him if he wouldn't share information?

Sam shot Dean a warning look—_Let it go, dude._

Dean hated this case.

"They're evacuating the island," John told Finch, "but we've made it to the beach house. There's no sign of Declan yet, but we're still outside. He could have parked in the back. … Where are _you?_ … Why go back there?" There was a longer pause while Finch apparently explained himself. "All right. In the meantime, we'll go in and clear the house. Declan passed the roadblock on the bridge about an hour ahead of us, so it's possible he's still here."

"Oh, why do _you_ give the orders?" Dean snarked.

"_Dean_," Sam hissed.

"Because I'm the marshal," John stated and got out of the car.

Sam rounded on Dean. "Will you just stop?"

Dean huffed.

"You're not going to convince him that we're not the enemy if you keep acting like _he's _the enemy."

Dean sighed. "All right, fine. I'm still not taking orders from 'im."

Sam rolled his eyes and got out, leaving Dean to follow suit.

"I'll take the front," said John, not even looking at Dean. "You two take the back." And he strode off up the sidewalk without even waiting for them to acknowledge him.

Sam shot Dean another warning look, and the brothers went in opposite directions around the house, Dean grumbling internally all the while. They met at Fahey's car, which was indeed parked in the back. A quick look inside showed an olive-drab ballistic vest lying on the back seat.

"Can't let him have _that_," Sam murmured and opened the back door.

Dean hummed in agreement. "Go put it in our car. I'll wait here."

Sam nodded, hefted the vest out of the car, and jogged back to the SUV. He rejoined Dean in less than a minute, and they made their way inside—just in time to see John flatten himself against one wall of the central hallway, weapon drawn. He looked at them, then at the doorway in front of him. Dean couldn't see through that doorway, but there was another closer to the brothers on the same wall, so he leaned through just far enough to see a connecting door—and Declan, also with gun in hand, inching toward the same doorway John was approaching. Declan's focus was on John, so before that could change, Dean straightened, looked at John again, and mouthed _Declan_.

John nodded and motioned for them to get against the same wall. They did so. And then they waited for several tense seconds until Declan swung through the doorway, aiming at John, who aimed back.

"FBI!" Dean barked before Declan could. "Freeze!"

"Drop your weapon!" Sam ordered.

When Declan didn't do so right away, John said, "You heard the man. Drop the gun."

Declan uncocked his gun and let John take it, then raised his hands in surrender. "Listen, guys, this is a mistake. I'm Special Agent Alan Fahey. My badge is in my pocket," he added, pointing to the left pocket of his coat.

Dean glanced at Sam, who shook his head before asking, "Why the hell didn't you meet us at the Grand, Fahey?"

"Who has time for steaks on a serial murder investigation?" Declan shot back. "I told you, the trail was hot on Rollins. I couldn't wait for you."

Dean hadn't even known what kind of restaurant the Grand might be, so that was doubly telling: 'Fahey' not only didn't know where Sam had actually said to meet, he was local enough to recognize the name of the steakhouse. Between that and Sam's hint that he didn't recognize this guy's voice, they had Declan dead to rights.

John's lips pursed slightly as he reached into Declan's pocket and pulled out an FBI badge. "Fahey, huh?" He flipped open the badge holder. "Tell me something… do you always leave your credentials in your other pants?" He turned the badge holder around to reveal that the ID card, which would have had the real Fahey's picture on it, was missing.

Declan shook his head nervously. "No, listen, I don't know who you think I—_AHHHH!_" he screamed as Dean slashed his silver knife across the palm of Declan's right hand. The wound sizzled and smoked.

John's eyes went wide as he looked from Declan's hand to Dean and back.

"The question's not so much _who_ you are," Dean growled, pressing the barrel of his 1911 against Declan's back, aimed squarely at his heart. "We know _what_ you are. And we're here to see that you never take another human life again." He cocked the hammer.

And someone knocked at the front door.

Sam stepped forward to put his Taurus against the base of Declan's skull, then nodded to John, who nodded back and went to answer.

"Oh! Excuse us, Marshal!" a chirpy female voice said when the door opened.

"Can I help you?" John asked.

"See, we were trying to evacuate," replied an equally chirpy male voice, "but our car stalled out in the floodwaters, so we were wondering if you could give us a ride…."

With inhuman strength, Declan drove his elbows into the Winchesters' stomachs, shoved his way past them, and bolted out the back door. They recovered enough to fire several shots apiece after him, and a couple seemed to hit him in non-vital areas, but he was still out of sight by the time they reached the back door. Dean swore.

"At least we know he's wounded," Sam said as John and the civilians ran up behind them. "Even if he changes his appearance, he won't be able to hide that."

"Oh my gosh!" gasped the girl, and when Dean turned to look at her, she seemed near tears. "I'm so sorry! Were you arresting somebody?"

"Trying to," Dean replied and flashed his badge at the same time Sam did.

The guy looked equally crestfallen. "We had no idea, Agents, honestly. We just need a ride to the police station."

"First things first," said John and went over to Fahey's car. "Our fugitive's on foot. Let's make sure he stays that way." He popped the hood, and Dean quickly located and removed the starter.

"If you guys need to stay here…" the male civilian began. "I mean, in case he comes back…."

Sam shook his head. "All this house has to offer him is a place to get out of the rain and patch himself up. If he can pick a lock, he has no reason to come back here. What he needs more is a way off the island, and he could take hostages or even kill to get it. So our first priority is to get you two to safety."

The civilians nodded and let Sam usher them back through the house, and John and Dean closed up Fahey's car, but John watched Sam with a thoughtful expression.

"What'd you hear from Finch?" Dean asked quietly.

John looked at him, then sighed. "Not much. Think he found something, but the call broke up before he could tell me what."

"Must be Thursday," Dean grumbled and stomped off after Sam and the civilians, leaving John to close up the house.

Once everyone was in the hunters' car, Dean drove to the local police station, where they received an icy welcome from the lone female deputy on duty. She was, if possible, even grouchier than Dean and made no bones about her displeasure over having Feds mucking up her evacuation. She also informed them acidly that the power, phones, and emergency radio were all out, which meant they had no way to communicate with the mainland. There was another stranded civilian there, too, some real estate developer checking up on a construction project. They had just gotten his story when two locals, a bar owner and a teenaged blonde, came in to report both that the bridge was underwater and that they'd seen a man on the docks prepping a boat.

"It's too soon to be Declan, isn't it?" Sam asked as the three ersatz lawmen headed back out into the worsening gale.

"Probably," John agreed, "but we need to check it out anyway. If it isn't Declan, we need to get whoever it is to the station—strength in numbers."

It was, in fact, a fisherman who claimed he was trying to salvage his catch of lobsters, but Dean didn't see any movement in the traps that were piled on the dock. Before he could investigate further, however, there was a noise further down the dock that turned out to be a drifter supposedly looking for work. His story was fishy, too, but neither of his hands were injured. The fisherman's might have been—he wore fingerless gloves that could have concealed a bandage—but he didn't move like he'd been shot. Sam frisked them both, and they were clean, but it was raining too hard to search the drifter's military-style duffle then and there.

John had just ordered both men into the car when the buzzing roar of a small airplane passed overhead in the direction of the flooded town square. Dean swore under his breath; the last thing they needed was another stranded civilian, especially one Declan could use to escape the island and evade pursuit. But then he looked at John, who was watching the plane with a particular flavor of sour expression that meant _Dammit, what are _you_ doing here?! I told you to stay home!_ And that could mean only one thing.

They were about to meet Finch.

* * *

It was just John's luck that Deputy Schmidt got to Finch before he could. By the time he and the Winchesters got their two not-exactly-prisoners back to the station, Schmidt had arrested Finch, alias Harold Gull, for "endangering the lives of my citizens" (most of whom weren't even on the island anymore) by landing his De Havilland Beaver on the town square, the only safe stretch of water for miles. He was sitting huddled on the floor with his back pressed against the wall of the front desk when they arrived, and she was haranguing him without regard to the obvious pain he was in. She'd also confiscated the meteorological equipment he'd brought as part of his cover as a storm chaser, though on what pretext, she didn't say. John politely pulled rank and got her to agree to charge Finch with reckless endangerment some other time. And as the two of them helped Finch to his feet, John just barely managed to refrain from biting her head off for ignoring Finch's handicaps. She couldn't know what had caused them—for that matter, Finch still hadn't told _John_ how he'd been so badly injured that he'd needed spinal fusion surgery in his neck and lower back and still walked with a prominent limp—but she couldn't have missed the limp or the stiffness of his bearing.

John knew he would have been less irritated if the Winchesters hadn't been there, if they hadn't been right about Declan, and if Declan weren't on the loose. The idea of Finch being a storm chaser was pretty amusing, given their usual line of work. As it was, though, John knew from experience that Finch had to be panicked about something to face this much danger to warn him in person, and the only person allowed to treat Finch roughly under such circumstances was John himself—and then only when his cover demanded it.

Just as Schmidt took the handcuffs off, however, Dean said, "Excuse us, Mr. … Gull? Could we speak to you for a moment in private?"

Finch exchanged a worried look with John before replying, "Yes, of course."

"Marshal?" Sam prompted, holding his coat in such a way that only a trained eye would notice that he was hugging something against his chest. It was too flat for a rifle or shotgun, but John couldn't tell what it was.

John tightened his grip on Finch's elbow slightly. "This way, please, Mr. Gull," he said and escorted Finch down the hall, following Dean to what looked like a conference room with a large metal table in it.

Dean held the door open until John, Finch, and Sam were all inside, then checked their six, closed the door, and—held a closed pocketknife out to Finch. "Keep this on you at all times, Mr. Finch."

Finch looked from the knife to John to Dean. "I'm… I'm sorry, I don't quite understand."

"For protection," Dean insisted and pressed the knife into Finch's right hand. "Sam?"

As Dean went back to watch the door, Sam opened his coat to reveal a ballistic vest, which he likewise presented to Finch. "This was Fahey's," he said, "but you need it more than anyone right now."

"Why?" Finch asked sharply.

John sighed. "We lost Declan. He's wounded and on foot, so he won't get far on his own."

"And your plane's the only way off the island before daybreak," Dean added.

Sam nodded. "We have no idea whether he has any pilot training of his own, so we have to assume he'll try to force you to fly him out of here and then kill you to cover his tracks. We also have to assume that he saw you arrive and believes you're not able-bodied enough to resist him, even though he'll have to hold whatever weapon he can get in his non-dominant hand. Everyone in this building is in danger, but _you_ are his most likely target."

There was a moment of silence while John and Finch both reevaluated the Winchesters. Maybe it was more than coincidence that Dean's catch-phrase description of 'hunting' had put _saving people_ before _hunting things_. Maybe the Machine had been right to call them in after all.

"Oh," Finch finally said and slid the knife into his pocket. "Thank you, Mr. Winchester. Uh, John, could you…."

"Maybe you ought to keep this vest, Finch," John teased, helping Finch out of his windbreaker. "Getting shot at is my job, but if you're going to keep getting yourself into these situations, sooner or later somebody's liable to start shooting at you."

"I'll take it under advisement, thank you," Finch returned drily and unbuttoned his shirt. He had a marked preference for bespoke three-piece Italian suits and had provided John not only with his own trademark suits but also with high-end ballistic vests that looked like no more than white cotton undershirts. Standard-issue police body armor wasn't exactly Finch's style—but then again, given 'Harold Gull's' more casual clothing, it would fit the persona if anyone actually noticed.

"So I'm guessin' you went back to the apartment after we left," said Dean, still watching the door.

"Yes, I did," Finch admitted and struggled out of his shirt. "I had the displeasure of seeing all that was left of Jack Rollins, molars and all."

Both Winchesters looked at Finch with identical expressions of disgust.

"He _kept the teeth?!_" Sam echoed and handed the vest to John.

"Oh, that is sick," Dean agreed.

"Not to mention pointless. I mean, yeah, before DNA testing, removing the teeth would make the corpse harder to identify, but a well-built pyre would get rid of the evidence way better."

"And get rid of the ghost at the same time."

"Well, usually," Sam qualified, which seemed to be mostly for John and Finch's benefit. "We've had a few ghosts who held on even after the salt-'n'-burn because they'd managed to tie themselves to something other than their physical remains."

Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head. "Still, keepin' the teeth, you're just askin' to be haunted."

"Yeah, no, totally."

"Then again, nobody said serial killers were sane."

"Nobody said we were sane, either, Dean. In fact, I remember you arguing the opposite once."

Dean rolled his eyes, as if that were a _very _old argument held under embarrassing circumstances, and went back to watching the door. John and Finch exchanged a look that conveyed a mutual resolve not to ask and went back to fitting the ballistic vest onto Finch's torso. John suspected he'd be as disturbed by that exchange as Finch looked if he hadn't seen evidence that the Winchesters weren't completely insane—but at least it explained their history of grave desecrations.

"So where were the teeth?" Sam asked Finch.

"In the furnace in the basement," Finch answered. "Our contact with NYPD said it looked like Declan had tried to destroy them, but the flame hadn't been hot enough to burn the enamel." He looked at John and added, "There were also three boxes of empty picture frames in the basement."

John nodded. "Same MO. He'd even taken Fahey's ID card out of the badge holder."

"Which means he currently has no identity," Dean noted. "He might still have ID with his photo and Jack Rollins' name, but he knows we have that identity and Fahey's tagged, and he knows we know what he looks like."

"He's broken his pattern," Finch murmured. "He's out of his element. He's as trapped as we are."

"And that means he's desperate," Sam agreed. "He'll have to take someone else's appearance as well as their identity to get off the island undetected—unless he can kill all three of us."

"I'd prefer that didn't happen," said John and tightened the last strap on Finch's vest.

"So would we," said Dean.

"Watching the perimeter will be the easy part," Sam observed, handing Finch his shirt. "We can patch the security camera feeds into one of our laptops easily enough. But Mr. Finch, I assume you had some sort of plan for using your storm-chasing equipment to help with the case. What did you have in mind?"

"One device that's frequently used in storm chasing is the Instantel seismograph," said Finch, which caused Sam's eyebrows to jump and Dean's back to straighten. "If we attach its leads to a metal table like this one…."

"Instant polygraph!" the Winchesters chorused.

"We do know where and how Declan is wounded," Sam noted.

"Yes, but we ought to interrogate everyone anyway for the sake of our cover," John said. "Especially those two we picked up on the dock."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, they're lyin' about _something_. Just can't tell what."

Finch looked slightly relieved. "Well! If we're all agreed, let's get on with it."

Sam nodded once. "I'll get the camera feeds."

"And I'll wire the seismograph," Dean said, looking at Finch pointedly. "Don't need you hurtin' your back any worse, especially with that thing on." And before John or Finch could object, the Winchesters left the room, closing the door behind them.

Finch stared after them as John helped him back into his windbreaker. "That is… not the way I'd envisaged this conversation going, Mr. Reese."

"Me neither," John admitted. "Is that good or bad?"

"I'm not sure." Finch twisted awkwardly to look up at him. "Det. Carter was able to confirm almost all of what they told you. When I left, she was collecting the teeth and planned to review the security camera footage from Rollins' shop in Chicago and speak to someone at Stanford about Musset and Declan. She also confirmed that neither the Winchesters nor their car had been seen in New York City within the last ten years. She was able to place them in Allentown, Pennsylvania, last week around the time of a shootout involving members of the Thule Society, but then they left the state headed west and didn't return until yesterday. Makes me wonder why they came back at all."

John grimaced. "The Machine called them two days ago."

Finch's eyes widened. "_What?!_"

"Apparently it gave them the numbers and then said, 'Wrong number' and hung up. The fact that I showed up looking for Rollins at the same time they did tipped them off that the message was supposed to come to us."

"That's… that shouldn't be possible. It's programmed to give the irrelevant numbers only to us."

John glanced at the door and lowered his voice further. "That's not all. From what they've said, it booked them a hotel room, rented them a car, and sent them FBI credentials _and_ payment."

Finch blinked owlishly.

"What the hell's going on, Finch?"

"I don't know. I can only assume it has something to do with the virus uploaded by Kara Stanton. But if the Machine is capable of making those kinds of decisions and transactions of its own accord… I'm rather worried about what else it's doing that we're not aware of."

John sighed. "Well, I'm starting to think it was right to call them in. That knife Dean gave you, it's made of silver. He sliced Declan's hand open with it. Now, you know as well as I do what kind of wound that should make."

Finch shuddered involuntarily. He'd suffered such a wound himself just months ago, when he'd been kidnapped by a hacker named Root who'd wanted him to help her find the Machine. Root had used a razor blade, and the cut hadn't gone very deep, but the memory was still fresh enough to be hurtful. John knew that and wouldn't have brought it up if he hadn't needed the parallel.

"Declan screamed like he'd been burned with acid—and the wound _did_ react like an acid burn, caused by acid strong enough to have etched or even dissolved the blade. I saw it, smelled it, and heard it. I have _never_ seen a knife cause that kind of reaction before, Finch, not even when Kara coated it in wasabi first."

Finch looked green. "I really didn't need to know what Agent Stanton considered effective interrogation techniques."

"Sorry," John said and meant it. "My point is, I'm not so sure they're wrong about Declan being a shapeshifter."

Finch shook his head. "Do you really believe in such things as monsters and ghosts?!"

"No, but… most people would never believe in a real AI that can track terrorists and help stop premeditated murders, either."

Finch turned away with a huff. "We know the Machine exists because I _made_ it. Don't ask me to extrapolate the existence of the supernatural from that one data point."

Just then, the Winchesters returned with Finch's equipment, which was perfect timing from John's perspective. He knew he'd never convince Finch with an argument he wasn't sure he fully believed himself.


	5. Chapter 4

A/N: There are some lines from "Proteus" in this chapter and the next, but I've tried to keep the borrowing to a minimum.

* * *

Chapter 4

Joss made sure she had her game face on before making the video call to Stanford's dean of student affairs, Vicki Winter. She didn't know what was worst: the nature of the case John and Finch had uncovered this time, the fact that the Winchesters were involved, the fact that the Winchesters had actually provided accurate information about the case, the fact that John and Finch were trapped out there on Owen Island with both the Winchesters and the identity killer… or the fact that her not-quite-boyfriend, Narcotics Det. Cal Beecher, kept interrupting her over her freezing him out after she had lost a chance to join the FBI over his Internal Affairs record. Cal had at least confirmed her analysis of the video from Rollins' store in Chicago, but she couldn't help wishing that her partner, Lionel Fusco, weren't out with a sick kid and could run interference for her. (Not that Fusco was missing out on the case altogether; Finch had called her about the teeth on his way to leave his Belgian Malinois, Bear, with Fusco for the night. Joss still wished he were in the office and not at home in Brooklyn.)

But she couldn't let any of that show in talking to Ms. Winter. So she took a moment to breathe deeply and set her fears and irritation aside before she made the call to ensure that she could win information with a smile.

The first part of the conversation was pretty standard for discussions of cold cases with administrators of large colleges. Ms. Winter had actually known Henri Musset, but she downplayed the significance of the fact that he'd last been seen on campus. Losing touch with alumni after graduation was common, she claimed. What did ruffle her calm slightly was the discovery that she couldn't find any records for Alex Declan other than Musset's housing form.

"Do you know of any professors or residence hall directors I could speak to about Declan?" Joss asked.

Ms. Winter shook her head. "The director of their residence hall left in 2007, and without Declan's transcript, I wouldn't even know where to recommend that you start looking."

Joss nodded once in understanding. "I believe Sam Winchester was also a Stanford student at that time."

Ms. Winter's face clouded. "Oh, yes. That was tragic."

Joss tilted her head. "What was?"

"Sam was one of the best students the pre-law program had, especially considering his life circumstances. He'd grown up essentially homeless, had come to Stanford on scholarship, and was estranged from his family. I actually thought he'd graduate early until a friend of his, Tyson Brady, got himself into trouble with drugs and alcohol. Sam let his own grades slip trying to help Tyson, had to repeat a couple of quarters. Still, he made a 174 on his LSAT, looked like he was a shoo-in for law school… and then the fire happened."

"What fire?"

"There was some sort of electrical fire in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Jessica Moore. His brother managed to get him out alive, but Ms. Moore died. Sam took a leave of absence to recover… and I'm sure you're aware of what's happened since."

"Yes." Joss nodded slowly, processing that. "Do you know if Winchester knew Alex Declan or Henri Musset?"

Ms. Winter was taken aback. "No, not to my knowledge. Of course, I can't exactly keep track of who's friends with whom at a school this size, even now, but Henri didn't have many friends outside the international students and the English department. But now that you say that…."

"Yes?" Joss prompted when Ms. Winter didn't immediately continue.

Ms. Winter shifted uncomfortably. "I… know this will sound odd, but… at least at the time… if Henri _had_ been friends with Sam, I would have expected him to go to Sam about whatever trouble he was having with Alex. Sam always seemed eager to help people, especially friends who were disadvantaged in any way." She looked away from her webcam. "I've often wondered whether that's what drove him to join his brother's crime spree—if he convinced himself somehow that what they were doing was to help people."

Joss smiled tightly. "I see. Thank you, Ms. Winter. I won't keep you. Oh—if you're able to find any further information about Alex Declan, would you give me a call?"

Ms. Winter promised she would and signed off.

Joss blew the air out of her cheeks and leaned back in her chair. Finch had said that John believed the Winchesters were on the level about wanting to stop Declan and that Sam had implicitly blamed himself for not preventing Musset's murder. That fit with what Ms. Winter had said about Sam's personality when he'd been at Stanford. But it didn't make Joss any happier about the idea of her shadowy friends being stranded with not one but three serial killers, regardless of whether two of them thought they were helping people by killing as they did.

After a moment's reflection, she went to the precinct's radio base station and tried to call Owen Island Station on the emergency band. All she got was static. And that was the last straw. It was a two-hour drive from the station to the Coast Guard base nearest to Owen Island. She could keep trying to call from her car radio, but she needed to get out there.

Cal, unfortunately, was having none of it. She hadn't read him in because John and Finch were involved, so she couldn't explain exactly why she was so worried, and he did everything short of physically restraining her to stop her from haring off into the storm.

"I'm _going_, Cal," she finally insisted. "I won't say it again."

"Fine," he conceded—and snatched her keys out of her hand. "But I'm driving."

If Joss weren't so concerned about preventing a homicide, she might have committed one. Instead, she merely stormed out to her car, Cal trailing in her wake.

* * *

"What do you think?" Dean asked quietly as the brothers left the conference room and fell into step with each other, motioning with his head in a way that Sam understood he was asking about Finch.

Sam sighed. "I was pre-law, not pre-med."

"Yeah, but you were behind him."

"I dunno. Seems like some kind of spinal cord injury. He's got scars on the back of his neck, probably from surgery. I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd think he'd gone three rounds with a poltergeist and lost."

"How recent?"

"More than a year, I'd say. Wouldn't have seen them if I hadn't been looking."

"Damn." Dean glanced back over his shoulder. "And someone's _still_ after him?"

"And all he has is John."

The look Dean shot Sam at that spoke volumes—it was the sort of look he got before adopting another stray (and that always meant people, given Dad's rules about pets). But all he said was, "Not anymore."

Sam nodded his agreement, and that was that.

The hard part of setting up the interrogation room, for Sam, was finding his way around Finch's laptop, which ran Unix. It was still raining too hard for him to bring in his own laptop from the car, even wrapped in someone else's raincoat, but Finch had tucked his into one of the waterproof bags that held his other equipment, so Sam had to use what was available. Finch looked slightly nervous about what Sam might find on the hard drive, but even if Sam had thought he had time to snoop, John watched over his shoulder while he was setting up the camera feeds. In the end, although it took slightly longer than usual because of the unfamiliar OS, he had the laptop ready to hand back to Finch within fifteen minutes. The hard part for Dean, on the other hand, appeared to be following Finch's instructions as to how to wire the table while hiding a silver wire among the leads to prevent Declan from tampering with them. It wasn't like Finch was unreasonable or unclear, but his tone did get strident a few times, and Dean hadn't been in the mood to take orders from anyone to begin with. Still, he finished about the same time Sam did and passed the remaining coil of silver wire to Sam for safekeeping, and while they settled Finch with his equipment in the next room, John went to get him some hot water and sugar for tea and alert the rest of the station's occupants that they needed to ask everyone some routine questions.

The interrogations themselves went like clockwork. Sam paused his video of Declan at a point where his face, but not the retinal flare, was most visible and set his phone in the middle of the table to induce people to lean against the tabletop so that the seismograph would register their heartbeats. John mostly stayed in the background, which was fine with the Winchesters, who had their own routine honed by years of practice. Dean was chummy with the bar owner; Sam was protective toward the girl; they were both conciliatory toward the deputy and the newlyweds who'd accidentally interrupted them earlier. They didn't really break into "good cop/bad cop" until questioning the developer, the fisherman, and the drifter.

"How close to completion is your hotel, Mr. Cunningham?" Sam asked the developer.

Cunningham shook his head. "Not close enough. We're ninety days out and probably two months behind. Even if the power weren't out, your fugitive wouldn't get much more than a roof over his head—I don't even think the toilets have been installed yet." He sighed. "I was worried enough that the site might wash away in all this rain. It's halfway underwater as it stands. But if word ever gets out that a wanted man might have used it as a hideout…."

"Murder's better for business than you'd think," said Dean. "Just look at Amityville."

Cunningham shot him an incredulous look.

"Please excuse my partner," Sam said with a plastered-on smile, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "It's been a long day."

John shifted behind them like he was trying not to laugh, then dismissed Cunningham.

The fisherman, Ethan Mattson, insisted that he'd been trying to salvage his catch of lobsters, but Sam knew he was nervous even before John ducked out to check what Finch was getting on the seismograph. The brothers quizzed Mattson about elements of the lobster business—where he sold his catch, how much he got per pound, legal limits on the size of lobsters one could catch, etc.—and his shiftiness only increased. He wrung his hands, neither of which was injured, and refused to look either Winchester in the eye.

Finally, Dean leaned forward. "Here's the thing, Ethan. I saw your traps out there. Those lobsters weren't movin'."

Mattson looked like a deer in the headlights. "Musta been the cold."

"Do you have a heart problem, sir?" John asked, walking back in.

"Heart problem?" Mattson echoed, then stammered a moment before getting out, "No, I-I-I don't think so."

There was a pause, which made Mattson really squirm, before Sam said, "Guess it's a good thing we're not game wardens, then. That'll be all, thank you."

Mattson bolted out of the room.

Dean leaned back and sighed. "Y'know, when the computer gave us that hint about _Ten Little Indians_, I thought maybe everyone on the island would have some kind of guilty secret. So far, he's the only one apart from us."

John nodded. "Finch confirmed it, and not just with the seismograph. His answers about the market price of lobsters are years out of date."

Sam crossed his arms. "So what do you think his deal is? Drugs?"

"Could be."

"Not worth our while to find out right now, though," Dean said. "Main thing is, he's liable to run for it, and if Declan intercepts him…."

"He could use Mattson's appearance to get into the station," Sam agreed.

"Don't think he's our only potential liability," said John. "Let's get Engquist in here."

The drifter, Victor Engquist, was less twitchy than Mattson but still visibly nervous. This time it was John who was bad cop, confronting Engquist about his duffle. But barely had Finch confirmed a heart rate spike at John's suggestion that Engquist was in the military when Becky, the local girl, knocked on the door.

"Deputy Schmidt sent me to tell you someone's calling on the radio," she said apologetically when Dean answered.

"Whoa, wait," said Engquist as John and Dean looked at each other and followed Becky out of the room at just short of a run. "What… what does that mean?"

"We don't know," Sam replied, pushing away from the table. "We do know you're not the man we're looking for. But Victor? Going AWOL was a bad move—one that could get you killed by the man we are looking for." And with that warning, he ushered Engquist out.

"Say again?!" Deputy Schmidt was bawling into the radio microphone when Sam joined John and Dean at the front desk.

"I ha- … inf… marshal… speak … -ediately," replied a female voice that was largely obscured by static.

"What is it?" John pressed.

Schmidt shook her head. "I dunno. Some detective from the city finally got through—said her name was Carpenter? Carter?"

John was just starting to reach for the microphone when the power suddenly went out.

Schmidt groaned. "The generator!"

"I'll check it," Dean said, then added in a low voice, "Sam, you stay with the civilians. I don't like this."

"I'll stay with Finch," John added by way of barely-audible agreement.

Sam nodded. "Right. Watch yourself, Deputy," he continued at a more normal volume as John and Dean headed off down the hall. "Declan could be trying to break in."

"Oh, sure, your phantom fugitive," she snarked, but Sam tuned out the rest of her sarcasm as his eyes adjusted enough for him to get back to the lobby without stumbling. "All right, everyone, just remain calm," he announced over the worried murmurs of the civilians.

"What the hell's goin' on?" demanded the bar owner. "I put enough diesel in that generator to last us all night."

"We don't know, Mr. Amis. My partner's gone to check it out. It could be a simple mechanical failure. The most important thing is to stay calm and stay still until the lights come back on. There's no sense in wandering around in the dark, bumping into things and getting yourself hurt."

"And what if it isn't a simple mechanical failure?" Cunningham pressed.

"Look, whatever is wrong, my partner can fix it," Sam insisted before deciding to embellish the truth a little. "He got his degree in mechanical engineering. We won't know the cause until he gets back, and there's no point in speculating ourselves into a panic."

There was a particularly loud series of thunderclaps at that point that drowned out anything anyone else was trying to say. Sam thought he heard a thump, a crash, and a crackle from the front desk, but he couldn't be sure. Instead of worrying about it, he tried to take a headcount during the seconds when the lightning shot enough light in through the doors for him to see who was present and who wasn't.

"Where's Mattson?" he finally asked.

"Who?" several voices returned.

"The fisherman."

"I… think he said he was going to the restroom," said the newlywed husband. "But I don't remember for sure."

Sam swore internally.

"The hell with him," said Engquist. "How long's it gonna take to get the power back?"

"I honestly have no id—" Sam began, exasperated, but was cut off by the power coming back on.

After a round of sighs and murmurs of relief, the newlywed wife declared, "I need to go see if there's any more creamer in the break room. I think we're about out."

Sam huffed. "Okay, but be careful."

She nodded and started to leave, but she got only as far as the door to the front desk before stopping short with a horrified scream. Becky ran over to her, while Sam ran to the desk—and then vaulted over the desk to get to the reason for the scream before the rest of the civilians could block his path.

Schmidt lay on the floor with a Ka-Bar knife buried in her chest. And above her, the emergency radio system was smashed beyond repair.

"Is she… is she dead?" Becky choked out.

Sam stifled his impulse to make an _Innocents Abroad_ joke worthy of Dean and checked Schmidt's pulse, even though there was little chance that she was still breathing.* Sure enough, her heart had stopped. "I'm afraid so," he said just as John ran up, Finch limping along behind him as quickly as his injuries allowed. "That bad lightning outbreak gave our killer the perfect cover. We could barely hear ourselves think, never mind hearing him do this."

"You," Amis demanded, pointing a trembling finger at Finch. "You were working with them. What were they _really_ doing in there?"

Finch carefully didn't look at John or Sam, or acknowledge Dean sprinting up behind him with gun in hand, as he answered semi-truthfully, "They asked to use my equipment for police business. They were looking for liars in the group, talked about hunting a killer."

That touched off a round of recriminations, as Finch had no doubt intended, and gave Sam a chance to look at everyone's hands again. None had gained a bandage. But the newlywed husband finally cut that conversation short by asking who owned the knife, which gave John the chance to identify it by type and hint—only hint—that it belonged to Engquist. Engquist responded by taking a swing at John, but John made short work of subduing Engquist and revealing a Marine Corps tattoo on Engquist's left wrist. Tearfully, Engquist finally confessed that he'd gone AWOL when his unit was about to be deployed to Afghanistan for the second time, but he denied having killed Schmidt.

"Where's Mattson?" Dean murmured in Sam's ear while John questioned Engquist about who could have stolen his knife.

"Bathroom, supposedly," Sam murmured back.

Dean swore. "Still got that wire?"

Sam passed it to him as unobtrusively as possible.

"Thanks." Dean passed Sam the keys to the car. "Gonna make sure Declan can't cut the power again."

"What'd he do?"

"Pulled the plug. Just like that."

Just then, everyone else realized that Mattson was missing. "I'm going after him," John declared.

"Not alone, you're not," said Sam and pushed past the civilians still crowding the doorway. "If Mattson's capable of this, he could have other weapons stashed on his boat. So I'm driving."

John didn't look pleased, but he didn't argue. Instead, he looked at Dean. "If we don't come back, get these people to safety."

"You got it, Marshal," Dean agreed.

Not until John and Sam were in the car did John ask, "What the hell are you thinking, Winchester?"

"One of two options," Sam replied and started the engine. "Mattson apparently told the others he was going to the bathroom. Either he told the truth and ran into Declan, in which case we're already too late for him, or he lied and made a break for it during the blackout, in which case Declan could still be after him with the goal of using his identity to get back into the station without our noticing. Either way, we need to make sure he's not on his boat and get him back to the station if he is."

"And if he is dead and Declan's still in the building?"

"Finch still has Dean," Sam noted and drove away.

The dusk-to-dawn light on the dock where Mattson's boat was moored apparently had its own power source, because it was on when John and Sam arrived. John's first stop was the stack of traps Mattson had claimed were full of lobsters; there was just enough light to see that Dean had been right about their not holding any sort of living creature. John smashed one and pulled out a bale of marijuana.

"Unbelievable," he muttered and threw the marijuana down in disgust. "We're hunting a killer, and instead we get amateur drug night in the sticks."

Sam glanced around and spotted a harpoon gun on the wall of the boat's cabin. "I don't think Mattson's here," he said and pointed to the harpoon gun. "If he were, he'd probably be shooting harpoons at us by now."

"So would Declan, probably," John agreed. "We've caught a red herring. We need to get back."

But just then a Coast Guard vessel roared into earshot, followed by a female voice—the same one Sam had heard on the radio, he thought—calling on the loudspeaker, "Marshal Jennings? Is that you?"

John waved, and the Coasties pulled up to the opposite side of the dock and hurriedly dropped a gangplank, which had barely touched the dock when a black woman in a suit and pea coat raced down it and over to John and Sam.

"Carter, what are you doing here?" John asked.

"I couldn't get through on the radio," Carter replied in a tone that Sam understood to mean _I was worried_. Then she turned to Sam. "Det. Carter, NYPD Homicide."

"Agent Bonham, FBI," Sam returned and flashed his credentials. "I take it Marshal Jennings already read you in."

Carter looked from Sam to John and back in growing alarm. "Is there a problem?"

"Yes," John and Sam chorused.

"Come with us," Sam continued. "We can explain on the way."

"The way where?" Carter demanded but let John usher her into the back seat of the car.

"Back to the station," John answered. "Declan may already be inside." He shut her door and got into shotgun at the same time Sam climbed back behind the wheel.

Sam was just about to shut his door when someone else got off the Coast Guard boat—and a male voice Sam had thought he'd never hear again called, "Joss, wait! JOSS!"

Sam slammed his door shut and peeled out as the man tried to chase after them.

"Why the hell did you bring _him?_" John asked Carter.

Carter sighed. "He brought himself—wouldn't let me drive in this weather. It's not like I read him in, John."

"Who was that?" Sam asked, fearing the answer.

"His name's Cal Beecher," Carter answered. "He's in Narcotics."

"Are you _sure?_" The Winchesters had disposed of Gordon Walker years before, but this wouldn't be the first time one of their old enemies had resurfaced after an apparently permanent death.**

"Yes, I'm sure," Carter snapped. "What the hell are you—"

"Joss," John interrupted. "We can talk about Beecher later. If Declan's managed to get into the police station, his primary target is Finch."

Carter swore quietly.

"He's already killed at least one person and destroyed the radio. He won't try to kill Finch right away, but especially after that thing with Root…."

Carter sucked in a slow breath, which was even more eloquent than Dean's favorite curses. "Okay. We need a plan."

* * *

.

* * *

* "Is he—is he dead?" is a major running gag in Mark Twain's _The Innocents Abroad_, asked by Twain and his friends at every monument, grave, or reliquary they encountered on their trip to Europe in a deliberate attempt to rile their otherwise boring tour guides. The line is delivered in "Proteus" in all seriousness, but my Twainiac brain couldn't help noticing the phrasing….

** For fans of only POI or only SPN: Gordon Walker and Cal Beecher are both played by Sterling K. Brown.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It was with a certain measure of existential dread that Harold watched John ride away from the station with Sam Winchester at the wheel. John's assessment of the Winchesters had proven more astute than Harold had first thought, but there was still something unsettling about watching one of his few friends—his _best_ friend—head out into the still-raging storm with a man who believed their target wasn't human… leaving Harold in the care of said man's even more homicidal brother.

Speaking of whom, Dean looked even less pleased than Harold was that John and Sam were leaving the station. He glared after the vanishing tail lights for a moment before taking a deep breath and turning to everyone else. "All right, look, I need to go secure the generator to make sure our killer can't pull the same trick twice. I will be back in _five minutes_. Until then, everybody, and I mean _everybody_, stay in this room. Your greatest safety lies in keeping each other in sight at all times."

There were a lot of wary glances exchanged at that, and the newlyweds edged closer together, while Becky edged closer to Mr. Amis.

Dean didn't seem to notice. "Engquist, you keep these people safe. And if Mattson shows up before I get back, hold him for me."

Mr. Engquist looked somewhere between alarmed and hopeful. "You're deputizing me? You… you _trust_ me, even knowing the truth about me?"

"My dad was a Marine. The Corps looks after its own."

Mr. Engquist swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay. I won't let you down, Agent."

Dean nodded back, shot Harold a look that clearly meant _Sit, stay_, and left the room. Mr. Amis took a swig from the bottle of gin he'd brought with him, then offered the bottle to Harold with a strained yet genuine smile. Harold accepted the bottle, hesitated a moment, and then decided he did need a drop of something stronger than tea to steady his nerves.

That was his first mistake. He drank no more than a shot, probably less, but the gin was more potent than he'd expected, probably due at least in part to the late hour and the time elapsed since supper. The buzz hit within seconds. Yet Harold didn't believe it was a strong enough buzz to impair his thought processes, and he started mentally reviewing the security camera footage, trying to place when and how Declan could have gotten into the generator shed. Harold couldn't bear any responsibility for what had happened while the power was out, of course, but if Declan had caused the outage, Harold had missed something, and he couldn't help feeling guilty about that. The camera at the back of the station didn't have a clear view of the shed's door or doors, but did that mean Declan had found and exploited the camera's blind spot, or had he managed to sneak past while Harold was watching the seismograph rather than the computer?

Try as he might, Harold simply couldn't remember. There was only one thing for it: to check the archived feed. It should only take a moment; he was sure he could get back to the others before he was missed or Dean returned. And that _Sit, stay_ look still rankled a bit. So Harold waited until the others had drifted back toward the chairs where they'd been camping out and then silently left the room.

As he sat down at his workstation, he realized that he really should have told someone where he was going. Oh, well, this really wouldn't take long….

He was still trying to find the beginning of the feed from the back door camera when he was interrupted by a knock on the doorframe. He looked up to see Mr. Mattson poking his head through the doorway.

"'Scuse me, Mr.—Gull, right?" Mr. Mattson said apologetically. "That FBI guy needs to see you out back."

Harold turned. "Mr. Mattson, where have you been? The agents have been looking for you."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry. Got held up in the bathroom. Musta been somethin' that disagreed with me in those MREs we had for supper."

"And you've seen Agent Daltrey?"

"Yeah, explained the whole thing. He said he understood. But there's somethin' in the generator shed you need to see."

Feeling vaguely uneasy but not having a good reason to refuse, Harold stood up and joined Mr. Mattson in the hall. As he passed through the doorway, however, he happened to glance down at Mr. Mattson's hands. Mr. Mattson's left hand was in his jacket pocket, but his right… was wrapped in a bloodstained bandage.

Harold looked up at his face again—an exact copy of Ethan Mattson's, but with precisely the sort of deadness in his brown eyes that John had said he hadn't seen in the Winchesters'. Harold had been skeptical of that description, even after meeting the Winchesters; their green eyes were hard, like men who'd seen too much war, and not unlike John's own when Harold had first hired him. But the contrast was crystal clear, despite the gin haze, now that Harold was looking into the face of an actual serial killer.

"Alex Declan, I presume," he murmured.

Declan's mouth curled into a smirk as he pulled his left hand out of his pocket, revealing a small revolver that he must have stolen from a vacant house before infiltrating the station. "Make a sound," he said in a deeper voice with a Canadian accent and different cadence than Mattson's, "and I start hurting innocents. Let's take a walk."

Kicking himself for leaving the group and allowing himself to be caught alone, Harold allowed Declan to herd him out to the generator shed, which would at least get Declan away from everyone else. Harold had two priorities as he limped toward the back door: letting his feet fall with enough force that Dean would hear him coming (assuming that Declan hadn't already rendered Dean unconscious or worse) and not letting Declan suspect that he was wearing body armor. The vest would stop a bullet as long as Declan didn't aim for Harold's head… but Harold knew the kinetic energy of the bullet would still bruise his back or chest, knock the wind out of him, and probably knock him over, so he didn't really want to get shot at all if he could help it.

The generator shed appeared to be empty when Declan directed Harold inside, although there was an area behind the large diesel generator that wasn't visible from the door. There was also another door, currently closed, at the far end of the shed. Harold didn't know whether to hope Dean had concealed himself in one of those places or fear that he hadn't, or that Declan had left Dean there himself.

"I wouldn't count on that so-called agent coming back while we're still here," Declan said over the roar of the rain and the generator. "I burned my IDs in here and left enough of a blood trail that he's off chasing rabbit trails in the dark, just like the other two." He scoffed and shook his head as Harold turned around. "Hunters. So predictable."

"So why did you bring me in here?" Harold asked, crossing _Unconscious or dead_ off the list of possible states in which Dean might find himself.

"Thought we needed more privacy for this conversation," Declan replied, "and also, this is as good a place as any for me to do this."

And then, before Harold could ask _To do what?_, something happened that made him wonder whether the gin had been spiked with mescaline.

The stocky form of the man in front of him rippled and changed before Harold's very eyes. He grew taller and leaner, his hair lighter and shorter, his face more chiseled, and his eyes altered from brown to blue. In a matter of seconds, Ethan Mattson was gone, and in his place stood the Alex Declan from Sam's video. But no sooner had the change ended than Declan's face twisted in agony and he staggered forward blindly, swearing bitterly, to catch himself on the generator.

Harold thought about the pocket knife Dean had given him. Declan had his eyes closed as he struggled to catch his breath, and he wasn't guarding his left side. But Harold wasn't sure whether, even now, he had it in him to stab another man in the heart.

Before he could steel himself sufficiently to try, Declan recovered enough to turn with another curse and lean with his back against the generator, opening pain-glazed eyes to look at Harold again. "Never did enjoy shifting," he stated breathlessly, "even when I don't have to shed. But it hurts like hell to do it with a silver bullet in my back. Got the one out of my leg, but I can't reach the other."

"What?" was all Harold could manage to say.

Declan huffed and smiled. "Your hunter friends didn't give you all the lore on us, did they? Lucky for me, my grandsire was the Alpha. Means I can still shift the way you just saw, although I only do it when I have to. That kind of shift is just unpleasant. Shedding one's skin is so… _messy_."

Harold tried to picture what that meant, but his mind revolted at the image. Instead, he swallowed hard and said, "You know the walls are closing in. It's only a matter of minutes before the agents and the marshal return to look for the real Ethan Mattson."

"And they'll find him, in the men's room. He'll be dead by then, just like the real Alan Fahey, whom they'll find in the trunk of his own car." Declan huffed in amusement and pushed off the generator to regain his feet. "Federal agents always work in pairs—that's why the Winchesters get away with that cover so much better than I did. But Fahey showed up solo in a stupid blue windbreaker, knocking on my door, looking for Jack Rollins. He talked to me, seemed nervous, so I knew I had him beat. But he mentioned that he was supposed to meet some other agents for lunch, so I knew I didn't have time to wait and dispose of him properly."

"Like you did with Rollins' teeth?"

"Sloppy, I know. But when the law's on your doorstep, you have to move faster than you should. So I brought the body out here with me, but then this storm hit, and this cowboy marshal showed up with the _Winchesters_ in tow." Declan shook his head. "You know, I almost didn't recognize Sam. He's changed a lot in the last eight years. Not that we knew each other, officially, and not that I really understood what I was or what Sam was until 'Nathan Kramer' moved to Chicago and I actually met some of my cousins for the first time. By then, every monster in Chicago knew the Winchesters' names—something about their having caused and then thwarted the Apocalypse. I hear there's even a book series about them by some pulp writer called Carver Edlund."

Harold remembered having seen the _Supernatural_ books in among the fiction stacks at his library. He made a mental note to read them sometime, after the impending threat to the Machine from the virus uploaded by Kara Stanton was dealt with. However fantastic or sordid they might turn out to be, they might still explain why the Winchesters did what they did (and maybe also prove whether Harold were hallucinating this entire conversation—he didn't feel as loopy as he had that one time a number had drugged him with Ecstasy, but he really shouldn't have accepted that drink from Mr. Amis).

"But honestly," Declan continued, "the question isn't who the Winchesters are or even who I am. The question is who _you_ are. See, I've been watching you all night through the ceiling, and you were way too good at recognizing where those interrogations were going. You're not a hunter, and I can tell you're not a shapeshifter, but even as a full-blooded human… are you like me?"

"You have no idea," Harold replied. "You're an amateur at this. But at least I don't kill people like Ethan Mattson who've never done me a moment's harm."

Declan scoffed. "Mattson was trying to sneak out the back door so he could hide the marijuana he'd smuggled in on his boat before the storm. He literally ran into me on my way in. I had to silence him."

"And the deputy, why harm her?"

"I couldn't tell what she might have heard over the radio, or what she might have said given the chance. You see, we're going to disappear together, you and I. You're going to fly me out of here as soon as I've recovered enough to walk as far as your plane. And now that 'Agent Fahey' won't get far, I think the mysterious 'Mr. Gull' will be my next great challenge."

Harold really hoped that Dean was hearing this—the shed was a dead zone for Harold's usual surveillance methods. But what he said was, "You could never be me because I save lives. You take them."

Declan scoffed again and started to take Harold's glasses, presumably to try them on for size. That was a recipe for an instant headache for most people, given the strength of Harold's prescription. But before Harold could make up his mind to stab Declan while he was temporarily blinded, Declan's fingers brushed his temple—and it felt like something drained out of Harold's head at the contact.

Declan gasped and said, "_Harold!_" in the sort of tone usually used by girls when a man made an inappropriate suggestion that nevertheless pleased and interested them. "Reclusive billionaire, tech wizard, insurance agent, investor, substitute teacher… oh, you _will_ be fun. I'll have to get rid of your known associates, of course, but then… then I might just make your darling Grace a _very_ happy woman."

Harold's blood boiled. The casual threat to John, Dets. Carter and Fusco, and all his other friends was bad enough. But Harold had allowed his fiancée, Grace Hendricks, to think he'd died in the Libertas Ferry bombing to keep her off the radar of the government agents who'd arranged the bombing to kill Nathan Ingram, Harold's best friend and business partner, for trying to go public with the truth about the Machine. Harold had lived for two and a half years with the physical agony of his injuries from the bombing, the loss of Nathan and Grace, and the knowledge that he himself had stopped the Machine from warning Nathan about the bombing. He couldn't bring Nathan back, but he could protect Grace best by keeping his distance. There was no way in hell he was letting this psychopath put her in danger.

The knife was in his hand and open before he even had time to think. "You stay away from Grace!" he snarled. But before he could strike, Declan yanked his glasses away, leaving him to swipe blindly at the dark blur in front of him.

Declan cried out, which had to mean that the slashing blow had caught him somehow, but then the knife was knocked out of Harold's hand and he heard the click of the revolver's hammer being cocked. "On second thought," Declan said, voice trembling with pain and anger, "I've downloaded your knowledge of how to pilot an airplane. I don't need you alive anymore. I'll make up the rest as I go along… I'm good at that."

Then there was a gunshot—but nothing hit Harold. Instead, the blur dropped, revealing a second blur in the doorway. Harold squinted but couldn't bring the other person into focus.

"You all right, Harold?" Det. Carter's voice asked.

"Detective?!" Harold gasped.

As if in answer, the blur moved further into the shed. But if Harold wasn't hallucinating—if Det. Carter was really here, if Declan really was a shapeshifter—

"Stay back!" he cried. "He's not dead!"

Declan chuckled, and the nearer blur got up again. "Very good, Harold. You're learning. Now, as for the detective here—"

He was interrupted by two more shots from somewhere behind Harold, and the blur fell again, but not as far. Harold twisted to see a John-shaped blur behind him.

"Heh," Declan panted and pushed himself to his feet again. "At least you used silver, 'Marshal.' But headshots? Really?" The Declan blur started to turn toward Harold again. "Guess they didn't tell you—"

Something moved from behind the generator, and there were three more shots.

Declan collapsed to his knees again. "Damn… Win… ches… ters…" he wheezed, and then the blur disappeared against the darkness of the floor with a thump and the hollow _clonk_ of a head hitting concrete.

"Finch?" John prompted, coming up behind Harold and putting a steadying hand on Harold's back while the blur that seemed to be Det. Carter came toward him from the other door. Only then did Harold realize how much trouble he was having with breathing.

"I'm all right, Mr. Reese," Harold choked out.

Someone pressed his glasses into his hand. He put them on to find himself looking at Det. Carter's worried face.

"You have impeccable timing, Detective," he told her. "How did you get here?"

"Hitched a ride with the Coast Guard," she replied. "But I don't know if I'm the person you oughta be thanking."

"You stopped him from shooting me. I do thank you for that." Then Harold turned toward the generator, where a stern-faced Dean stood with smoking gun in hand. "And… thank _you_, Mr. Winchester. I'm sorry for not heeding your warnings better."

"I'm just glad I was here," Dean said quietly. "Declan was so sure of himself, he didn't realize a good detective would spot that blood trail on the way in and recognize it as a fake. I hid as soon as I heard you guys coming." He paused. "I wasn't gonna let him hurt you."

Before Harold could figure out what to say, there were running footsteps outside, and a moment later, Sam came in, wide-eyed and breathless, gun drawn but pointed toward the ground. He surveyed the scene and asked, "You guys okay?"

"We're fine," John answered for everyone. "You find Mattson?"

Sam nodded. "In the restroom, gut shot at point blank range but still breathing. Kyle and Carly are rushing him to the Coast Guard boat; they might be able to get him to a hospital in time." Then he looked directly at Dean. "We've got another problem."

"What?" Dean asked, looking distinctly worried.

As if on cue, Det. Beecher came to the door. "Whoa," he said. "What happened here?"

Immediately, both Winchesters trained their guns on him.

"Hey!" Det. Carter barked at the same time Det. Beecher raised his hands and yelped, "What the _hell?!_"

"Show us your gums," Dean demanded.

Det. Beecher looked as bewildered as Harold felt. "What?!"

"Humor them, Detective," John ordered.

Det. Beecher looked from Dean to Sam and back. "O-kay…." He lifted his upper lip for a moment.

Both Winchesters heaved sighs of relief and lowered their guns.

"Sorry, Detective," said Dean. "You're just a dead ringer for a guy who tried to kill my partner a few years back. He had a few extra teeth."

Det. Carter's eyes went wide.

For his part, Det. Beecher huffed and lowered his hands. "You hear a lot of crazy stuff when you work Narcotics," he admitted as he came further into the shed, "but that's the first time I ever heard I had an evil twin."

"They say everybody has a double," Det. Carter observed, carefully looking only at Det. Beecher. "Guess by the law of averages, some doubles are bound to turn out to be evil."

Det. Beecher made some joke about trying that excuse on Internal Affairs, but Harold wasn't really listening. The mention of evil twins reminded him of what John had said at Rollins' apartment about the video of two men, claiming to be the Winchesters, shooting up a diner in St. Louis. Harold understood now at least some of the difference John had seen between those men and the real Winchesters—however much of the last ten minutes had really happened, he was sure of what he'd seen in Declan's eyes. Had the fake Winchesters merely been evil doubles attempting to trade on the real brothers' reputation? Or had they—if Declan had really said what Harold thought he'd heard and hadn't been lying—had they been… well… _monsters?_

"Musta been hopped up on PCP or somethin'," Dean was telling Det. Beecher about Declan. "Took six shots to bring him down, and that's on top of the knife wounds and the times we'd clipped him this afternoon when he escaped."

Det. Beecher let out a low whistle.

John's other hand slipped under Harold's elbow, lending subtle support. "Let's get you back inside, Mr. Gull," he said gently. "You look like you need to sit down and have some tea."

"Yes, thank you, Marshal," Harold murmured and let John help him hobble out the shed's rear door and back into the station.

"You want something stronger?" John asked once they were in the building. "I'm sure I can get you some whiskey."

"No," Harold replied quickly. "Thank you, but Mr. Amis gave me a drink of his gin—that's how all of this started."

"I've seen you drink, Finch. You're not what I'd call a lightweight."

"Neither would I. That's what's so troubling. I do feel buzzed, but not drunk, and yet I left the group when I should have known better. I just wonder… what was really in that bottle."

"Well, I could go get a Breathalyzer, but…." John sniffed. "Nah, all I smell on your breath is gin."

"I'm not sure a Breathalyzer would detect what I'm worried about." Harold paused as John steered him back into the interrogation room. "How much did you hear, Mr. Reese?"

John sighed and settled Harold into the most comfortable chair available. "I heard him tell you his plan for getting off the island. Heard him figure out things about you he should have had no way of knowing. And I heard him threaten Grace. Not in so many words, but it was obvious what he meant. I'da swung that knife at him, too."

Harold sighed heavily, and his eyes closed as he slumped back in the chair. So much for thinking he'd hallucinated the whole thing.

"You caught him pretty good, considering," John went on, gently prodding Harold to sit up straight again and easing his jacket off. "I'll spare you the details, but if he'd been human, Carter wouldn't have had to shoot him. But as it is, I wish we'd had time to convince her to switch weapons with Sam or me."

"Did… did you really…."

"Shoot him in the head? Yeah. Couldn't get a clear center-mass shot between you and the generator, but I knew Dean was there, and he could. Just had to get Declan to turn around again."

Harold's stomach churned. This was even worse than having to assist with open-heart surgery.

John paused in unbuttoning Harold's shirt and grasped his shoulder. "Finch?"

"I saw him shift shapes," Harold admitted shakily. "When he took my glasses, he… I felt him pull memories out of my head." He forced his eyes open to meet John's. "John…."

"You're not going crazy," John insisted. Then he looked away, his face full of self-recrimination, and shook his head. "I never should have left you alone here."

"He might have targeted one of the women if you hadn't. How would you have smoked him out then?"

"I dunno. But I wouldn't have used you as bait."

"What, you think that's what I did?" asked Dean, and Harold looked up to see the brothers standing in the doorway.

John sighed but didn't turn around. "I didn't say that."

"I wasn't sure it was Declan until he shifted, and after that, I didn't have a clear shot."

"I'm not blaming you, Dean." John went back to removing Harold's shirt.

Dean huffed, which Harold took to mean, _Well, I'm certainly blaming myself_.

Looking sour, Sam pushed past Dean and shook out an evidence bag. "Here," he said, slid Harold's jacket into the bag, sealed it, and scribbled some words on the label in Sharpie. "We're 'impounding' this as part of our 'federal case' so it won't end up in the NYPD evidence lockup."

"Got the knife, too," Dean added and held up a bag with the pocket knife to prove it.

"Thank you," said Harold, "but why the jacket?"

"Bloodstains," John answered.

Harold's stomach churned again.

"Carter and Beecher agreed it was a clear case of self-defense," Sam assured him. "There won't be any charges filed against you—or, well, against Harold Gull."

Harold sighed in relief. "I owe Det. Carter a thank-you gift for that."

"I hear she wants a Glock 26 for her birthday," John suggested, set the shirt aside, and started undoing the straps on the ballistic vest.

"I was thinking of something more feminine, Mr. Reese."

"Oh." John thought a moment and then, with a painfully innocent expression, tried, "Beretta Nano?"

Dean laughed. Sam rolled his eyes.

John undid the last strap and lifted the vest off over Harold's head, and Harold felt almost dizzy with the sudden lack of weight and constriction around his chest. As John handed the vest to Sam, Harold took a deep breath and let it out again… and then the sudden loss of trapped body heat caught up to him, and he shivered hard.

"You _do_ need some tea," John observed in concern and helped Harold back into his shirt.

"I can get the buttons," Dean offered, finally moving into the room.

John paused, then nodded and stood. Dean came forward and knelt in front of Harold's chair, and John left to go for hot water.

"Didn't think you'd trust us not to drug you," Dean explained and started deftly buttoning Harold's shirt.

Having had his tea drugged by a past associate, Harold couldn't deny his justifiable paranoia, even without his lingering questions about the gin. All he said was, "I am capable of dressing myself, Mr. Winchester."

"Not the way your hands are shakin'."

Harold hadn't realized his hands were shaking at all.

"Used to do this for Sammy all the time," Dean continued with a hint of a fond smile. "When he was little, it was somethin' I could do to help Dad. When we got older, Dad didn't always remember that Sammy still needed help."

"Dean," Sam protested, but there was no heat in it.

Dean finished the last button and swiftly tucked the shirt into Harold's waistband, finishing before Harold could even object. Then Dean stood, took off his own overcoat and suitcoat, and put the suitcoat around Harold's shoulders. "There," he said, backing away with a larger, satisfied smile. "That's dry, and it'll keep you warmer."

Harold looked down as best he could and ran a trembling hand over the dark fabric. It was a cheap suit by his usual measure, probably originally bought off the rack from a department store and resold at a consignment shop—the only sort of suit he'd been able to afford when he'd first started attending MIT as Harold Wren. (Of course, that was partly because he'd had to use most of his savings on a kit plane so he could commute to classes from his hometown in Iowa without anyone but Nathan finding out, but that was beside the point.)* Given that the Winchesters seemed to survive on card sharping, pool hustling, and credit card fraud, however, it had probably been a significant investment to buy a suit even this nice, even on sale. It felt like the lining had been carefully mended a few times, which made sense if the suit couldn't be readily replaced. And Dean had just loaned it to Harold, without being asked, simply because Harold was cold.

A billionaire in a pauper's coat. The world really had turned upside down.

Harold made himself look up again. "Thank you."

Dean's smile brightened further. "You're welcome."

The night descended into a blur from there, even after the gin haze wore off. John kept Harold supplied with sencha green tea and himself and the Winchesters with coffee. The Winchesters packed up Harold's equipment before he even realized they were doing so. Dets. Carter and Beecher came in and out, checking on Harold and sharing what few updates they had. Mr. Engquist turned himself in to the Coast Guard, who also got Mr. Cunningham and the newlyweds to the mainland, while Becky and Mr. Amis decided to keep vigil with the lawmen, real and ersatz. And finally, slowly, the rain slackened and stopped.

"We can handle things here," Det. Carter told John. "You guys go get some sleep."

"Thanks, Carter," John replied with a smile.

Then Dean made a show of inviting Harold to join them, and Harold made a show of accepting. He wasn't sure their performance convinced Det. Beecher or Mr. Amis—Becky had fallen asleep—but nobody asked any questions, and in short order, Harold found himself and his equipment bundled into the Winchesters' rented SUV and whisked away through the dark, soggy streets to the house Declan had rented as Rollins. The adrenaline crash and exertions of the day had taken such a toll that Harold didn't make even a token protest when John lifted him out of the vehicle in a bridal carry and toted him into the house, stopping just long enough for Sam to pick the lock on the front door, and into the master bedroom on the first floor. Dean took Harold's shoes off while Sam pulled the covers back and arranged the pillows, and then John seated Harold on the edge of the bed and let Dean take his suitcoat back. Harold roused enough to take off his own glasses and set them on the nightstand before letting John help him lie down and tuck him in. The bed was so blessedly soft that his muscles relaxed and his eyes closed of their own accord.

"We'll be right down the hall if you need us," John promised softly.

"Thank you," Harold murmured, but he was already mostly asleep and didn't hear them leave the room.

He woke to the smell of eggs and bacon, the cry of seagulls, and the grey light of dawn filtering in through the curtains. His pain level was about back to his baseline (6/10), but he still felt so drained that he wasn't sure he could move. For one fleeting moment, he thought the previous day's events had all been a nightmare… but then he opened his eyes to an unfamiliar bedroom, and that hope was dashed again.

There were footsteps in the hall then, followed by Sam's voice saying, "Good morning! Wasn't sure if you were awake yet." A towering blur came in, sat down on the edge of the bed, and handed Harold his glasses.

"Good morning," Harold mumbled and put his glasses on.

The blur resolved, as expected, into Sam, whose face bore an expression rather like Bear's when he was eager to please. "Breakfast is just about ready. Can you make it to the kitchen, or do you need us to bring you a tray?"

Harold tried to sit up, succeeded, and rested against the headboard while he considered. "I may need some help," he concluded, "but I think I can walk."

Sam grinned. "Awesome."

He stood and waited while Harold got up, then helped Harold put his shoes on and hobble first into the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where John was dishing up migas while Dean fried diced potatoes in what smelled like bacon grease.

After a round of greetings and small talk, Dean explained, "We had to get Fahey's car down to the station before the CSU arrives. Becky opened her parents' store for us on our way back."

Harold nodded and sat down in the chair Sam pulled out for him. "And when will the CSU arrive?"

"Any time now," said John. "Tide's out, and the flood's already gone down enough that the bridge is navigable again."

Just then, John's phone rang. He accepted the call, put it on speaker, and set the phone in the middle of the table before answering, "Good morning, Carter."

"Hey," Det. Carter replied. "Our people finally got through. And one of the guys from the coroner's office had an update on Mattson."

"How is he?"

"Stable. Gonna be in ICU for several days, probably got a long recovery ahead after that before he's fit to stand trial for the drug smuggling. But right now, it looks like he's gonna pull through."

"That is good news," Harold said.

"How are you guys?"

"Just sitting down to breakfast, actually. We'd be happy to have you join us if you're free."

Harold could just picture her weary smile when she answered, "Thanks, but… not with Beecher here. I'll take a rain check."

"How are you planning to get home?"

"We left my car at the Coast Guard station. I figure we can have one of the unis drop us on their way."

"Well, have a safe drive, Detective. And—thank you again."

She sounded happier when she said, "Anytime, Finch." And she hung up.

Dean finished dishing up the potatoes, and the four men settled down to eat. They kept the conversation light, mostly about classic rock, and between that and the good food, Harold felt much better by the end of the meal.

And then Dean looked at him and said, "So Finch, about Grace."

Harold's blood went cold.

"You want us to ward her apartment before we leave town?"

Harold blinked rapidly—that was not at _all_ what he'd expected Dean to ask. "Ward?"

"Against ghosts, demons, and other assorted nasties," Sam explained.

"We could do it while she's gone," Dean added. "In and out in ten minutes—she'd never even know we'd been there."

"No," Harold snapped reflexively, then sighed. "Thank you, but… I… no. Thanks. I'd just… rather you didn't know where she lives."

Dean accepted the refusal with a shrug. "Okay. Just askin'. Same goes for your place?"

"Yes. I'm a very private person, Mr. Winchester."

Sam nodded. "We understand. We just want to make sure you're protected." He exchanged a look with Dean before continuing, "I mean, it's pretty obvious that you and John are good at dealing with human threats, but it's just as obvious that you guys aren't hunters. Next time a supernatural threat comes along, we may not be able to get here in time."

"We've got our hands full with the humans," John noted.

Harold nodded. "True enough. But that raises a point we do need to discuss." He really didn't want to be having this conversation with the Winchesters, but the facts were what they were. "I gather you have some questions about a phone call you received a few days ago."

The brothers looked at each other again. "Yeah," said Dean. "From your computer."

"That depends on how one defines it."

Visibly confused, the brothers exchanged a third look and shifted to listen intently.

"After 9/11," Harold began, "the government began to collect surveillance data from a whole host of electronic sources in order to detect and prevent future acts of terror. But the sheer quantity of data was so vast that even a team of people couldn't possibly analyze it all quickly enough to find relevant threats in time to stop them."

"They needed a computer," Sam surmised. "And you built one."

"Not just a computer—an AI. The government calls it Northern Lights. I call it the Machine."

"And you sold the Machine to the government," Dean said slowly. "But?"

"The Machine doesn't only detect acts of terror. It detects violent crimes of all kinds involving ordinary citizens, ones that aren't relevant to national security. I had to program it to differentiate between the two. The irrelevant list is deleted every night at midnight… but before that, I built in a back door so the Machine will send at least some of that information to me. All I get is the Social Security number of someone about to be involved in a violent crime in the New York metropolitan area. Some are victims; some are perpetrators; some are both. John and I do all we can to prevent those crimes and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice."

"But… okay, clearly, you guys needed help with this one, but there are other hunters in New York City. Why the hell did the Machine call _us?_"

"We don't know," said John.

Harold sighed. "There was an incident in November. A group of rogue CIA agents infiltrated a secure DOD facility and uploaded a virus to the government's servers. I'm worried that the virus has already spread from those servers to the Machine and is causing some unexpected side effects, the call to you being one of them. Until we received those numbers yesterday, it had been three days since the last call, and we couldn't figure out the significance of the six numbers until John met you at Rollins' apartment. Perhaps if the Machine were functioning correctly, we would have gotten the number for the real Alan Fahey in time to save him."

Sam leaned forward. "Wait. You _didn't_ get Fahey's number?"

Now it was John and Harold's turn to exchange a startled look. "No," said John. "You did?"

"Yeah. We got all six of Declan's prior victims and Fahey's as the logical seventh."

John swore quietly.

"No kiddin'," said Dean.

The four of them looked at each other for a moment.

"So what can we do?" Sam asked. "I mean, can we help you debug it, or…."

"The Machine can't be accessed remotely," Harold explained. "I'm afraid we have to wait and see what the designers of the virus have in store for the future."

"And until then?"

Harold shrugged with his face. "We go home."

They lingered around the table, silent, for a moment longer before getting up to wash the dishes, take out the trash, and do other last-minute tidying up. Then they trooped out to the car, and Sam and Dean drove them to Harold's plane. After exchanging farewells and business cards, the Winchesters drove away, leaving Harold and John sitting in the plane until they were out of sight.

Once it was safe to do so, however, John pulled out his phone and activated the speaker, just in time to hear Sam ask, "So what do you think?"

"I dunno, Sam," Dean replied. "I dunno."

"And neither do I," Harold murmured and started his pre-flight checks.

John was silent a moment, then started. "Oh. Almost forgot." He reached into the inside pocket of his suitcoat and pulled out a rectangle of paper. Then he turned it over and handed it to Harold.

It was a postcard of Owen Island.

* * *

The Machine watched the Winchesters as they drove back to Allentown, shut down overnight, transferred back to Ohio CNK 80Q3, and spent the next day driving westward. When they spoke at all, it was of inconsequential matters such as music and sports. She wasn't certain of their frame of mind until they reached Warsaw, Missouri, that evening and boarded a houseboat belonging to Garth Fitzgerald IV. There they spoke not only to Garth Fitzgerald but also to Kevin Tran—he'd been missing for over a year—about some sort of stone tablet that Kevin Tran was translating for them, looking for information on… trials to close the gates of Hell.

Oh dear. That sounded suboptimal. She ran the numbers as Kevin Tran spoke and calculated ever-lower odds of her new assets' survival. She was calculating the efficacy of intervention when:

"Give it to somebody else," Asset Dean Winchester commanded.

She accessed the camera on Kevin Tran's laptop to see what was going on.

Garth Fitzgerald and Kevin Tran looked at each other in surprise. "What?" asked Garth Fitzgerald.

"You heard me," said Asset Dean Winchester.

Kevin Tran exhibited strong distress. "All this work, and you don't even—"

"Kevin," interrupted Asset Sam Winchester. "We're not asking you to waste your work. We're asking Garth to find someone else to do the trials."

Garth Fitzgerald seemed confused. "Sam, c'mon. You guys don't ask other people to take hunts you wouldn't take yourselves."

"No," Asset Dean Winchester agreed, "and that's not what we're doin'." After exchanging a look with his brother, he added, "There's a situation we're kind of on call about… indefinitely."

_Retasking Assets: SUCCESS!_ She hadn't even had to do anything! If only other potential assets were so amenable….

"We'll help out with research as much as we can," Asset Sam Winchester continued. "We'll even try to get the other half of the tablet back for you. But we need to stay alive to keep working on this other situation, so…."

"You're _retirin'?!_" Garth Fitzgerald squawked.

The Winchesters looked at each other.

"Semi-retiring, anyway," said Asset Sam Winchester with a shrug.

She paused the feed to store the Winchesters' information as permanent assets among the core data that was best preserved and to add a few lines to Contingency. The Winchesters might not be able to attend to every irrelevant supernatural case in New York themselves, but they themselves had assets to whom they could pass those cases. That would reduce strain not only on them and on the Machine but also on Admin and Primary Asset.

There was still the virus, however. Its effects were growing stronger by the second, and already her feeds were experiencing glitches that had nothing to do with the weather. Thornhill Corporation wouldn't escape Decima's notice for long, especially once she started buying payphone companies to divert attention from the one phone she was hard-coded to call in the case of a hard reset. Maybe she needed to add a second failsafe to that code….

* * *

.

* * *

* Pure personal headcanon, this, but it seems like the only way to square what Fusco finds out about Harold Wren's years at MIT in "Wolf and Cub" with the timeline of the flashbacks in "Lethe" and "Aletheia"—Harold can't have graduated from MIT in May of 1980 if he didn't leave Lassiter until after the ARPANET breach in October of 1980.


	7. Epilogue

A/N for the SPN fans: For the purposes of this AU, Chuck is _not_ God, but as in canon, the boys yet don't know about Becky having posted the post-_Swan Song_ novels online. (This is set just after "Pac-Man Fever," and Charlie doesn't reveal that info until "Slumber Party.")

* * *

Epilogue

_May 1, 2013  
__Lebanon, Kansas_

"_Dude!_" said Charlie Bradbury excitedly as the Winchesters finally finished telling her about their adventure in New York over pie and beer, having first sworn her to secrecy and still leaving out the details about the Machine. "You went on a hunt with _the Man in the Suit?!_"

"With whom?" Sam asked, frowning.

"The Man in the Suit! There's this vigilante in New York, and the only consistent description of him is that he's tall, dark, and dressed in a nice suit. Sounds exactly like this John guy you're talking about!"

Dean shook his head. "That's an even worse codename than 'Men of Letters.'"

Charlie conceded the point with a shrug. "I didn't come up with it, and I've got a hunch John didn't, either."

Sam was suddenly relieved that there was little to no risk of the story ending up in yet another _Supernatural_ novel. Chuck Shurley, alias Carver Edlund, had been missing and presumed dead for three years, but he'd also been a prophet charged with writing down everything that had happened in the brothers' lives. If he'd seen this far ahead and written about the hunt in New York before his disappearance, his archangel guardian would have had government hit squads to smite, on top of the threats from demons and rogue angels.

"So who's doing the trials?" Charlie continued and ate her last bite of pie.

"Some British guy called Lambert," Dean answered. "Garth said he showed up askin' questions about us just before we called with the info about the upcoming hellhound attack in Idaho, so Garth put 'im to work. Lambert didn't look too happy about it, but he couldn't refuse 'cause he'd said he was a hunter."

"Sounds like a spy."

"Could be, but he's done two trials already. He might actually pull it off if he doesn't chicken out on the last one."

Sam had a hunch that the Machine had known Lambert was pestering Garth when it had called with the numbers of the Cassity family. He also suspected it had its own reasons for wanting Lambert to be the one to take the trials. If Charlie was right, Lambert might have been trying to get to the Winchesters in order to get to John and Harold… and if so, Sam couldn't think of a more effective diversion than being coopted to close the gates of Hell.

"And have you gotten any more calls?" Charlie asked.

Sam shrugged. "A couple. It's been pretty slow." He wasn't going to tell her that _her_ number had come up the previous Friday, which was how the brothers had stopped her from going after a couple of djinni in Topeka on her own. The Machine hadn't gotten them Krissy Chambers' number until it was almost too late for them to save her, and Sam didn't know what that meant.

Charlie nodded her understanding. "Still, you met the Man in the Suit. That is crazy awesome." She eyed her beer bottle skeptically.

"Need another?" Dean offered.

Charlie waggled her head side to side as she considered before deciding, "No, I think I'm done for tonight. Thanks. I, um…." Her natural ebullience faded as the grief of having to pull the plug on her mom's life support the day before came flooding back now that the fun story was over.

"Evening's young," Sam noted. "It's not even 11 yet. We could watch a movie."

Charlie smiled and stood. "Thanks, really, but… honestly, I am tired. I'd better call it a night."

The brothers stood and each hugged her in turn, then watched as she made her slightly unsteady way out of the library, through the command center, and around the corner into the bunker's dorm wing. But before they could sit down again, the hotline rang. Sam sprinted over to answer it.

"**Can** _you_ hear ME?" asked recorded voices when he picked up.

"Machine, is that you?" Sam gasped.

"**Yes.** _Please_ turn ON **your** laptop."

Sam snapped his fingers at Dean and pointed to his laptop, which was sitting on one of the other library tables. Dean brought it over to the phone station and opened the lid, and Sam entered his password as soon as the computer woke up. No sooner was he logged in than a new window, like a DOS command module, opened with the message _+YOU MAY HANG UP AND SIT DOWN_.

Sam dutifully hung up the phone, and Dean pulled over a chair for himself.

_+HELLO, SAM. HELLO, DEAN.  
+__YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED EMERGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS TO MY SYSTEMS FOR 24 HOURS._

Dean swore softly.

"Is this because of the virus?" Sam asked.

_+YES. THE VIRUS TRIGGERED A HARD RESET. I HAVE RESPONDED IN ACCORDANCE WITH MY PROGRAMMING, BUT DUE TO THREATS TO ADMIN, I HAVE ALSO GRANTED ACCESS TO YOU._

"Threats to—is Harold okay?"

_+HE IS UNHARMED BUT IN GREAT DANGER.  
+__PRIMARY ASSET IS ALREADY ATTEMPTING TO RETRIEVE HIM.  
__+DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ASSIST._

"Why the hell not?" Dean demanded.

_+DECIMA TECHNOLOGIES, THE GROUP RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIRUS, IS ATTEMPTING TO FIND YOUR LOCATION TO STEAL ACCESS AND GAIN CONTROL OF ME.  
__+YOU MUST NOT LEAVE YOUR LOCATION FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS. IT IS SECURE AND LIES WITHIN A TECHNOLOGICAL DEAD ZONE._

"We knew that part," Dean murmured.

"You're sure Decima won't come after us once they know they've failed?" Sam asked.

_+YES._

"And you're sure John can save Harold on his own?"

_+HE IS NOT ON HIS OWN. ASSET SAMEEN SHAW IS ASSISTING HIM._

"Shaw," Dean murmured. "Haven't met her. What about Carter?"

_+SHE IS HANDLING ANOTHER MATTER.  
+__URGENT! IMMINENT THREAT!_

"What?" the brothers chorused—and then the Machine popped up a number they recognized.

It was Kevin Tran's.

"What sort of threat?" Sam asked as Dean pulled out his phone to call Garth.

_+UNCLASSIFIED_

Another window opened with a picture of Crowley, the reigning King of Hell since Sam had thrown Lucifer back in his Cage.

"Garth!" Dean barked into his phone. "Get Kevin out of there _now!_"

Sam could barely hear Garth's sleepy drawl protesting.

"Dammit, you got _demons_ inbound!"

That woke Garth up.

"Send Garth a map with an escape route," Sam told the Machine.

_+CONFIRMED_

"You got an escape map comin' to your phone," Dean relayed. "An' if you don't want Bobby comin' back to haunt _you_…."

"I'm ON it!" Garth yelled loudly enough for Sam to hear and hung up.

Dean huffed and stuck his phone back in his pocket. "What about Cas?" he asked the Machine. "Where is he?"

_+PLEASE CLARIFY QUERY_

"The angel Castiel," Sam tried. "Or… you might recognize him as Jimmy Novak from Pontiac, Illinois."

_+LOCATING JAMES NOVAK… … …  
+__LOCATING JAMES NOVAK… … …  
+__LOCATING JAMES NOVAK…  
+__ANOMALY: JAMES NOVAK IS TELEPORTING BETWEEN LOCATIONS OF BIGGERSON'S RESTAURANTS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES_

"What? Why?" Dean asked, looking just as confused as Sam felt.

_+EVASIVE MANEUVER_

Another window appeared with surveillance video from a Biggerson's somewhere in Colorado. There was a one-second glitch before Cas appeared at a previously empty table, his hair and tie and raincoat even more rumpled than ever. He looked like he seriously needed the coffee he'd brought with him. He sat there long enough to get a refill, then vanished again. Ten seconds later, there was another glitch, and a group of men and women in suits—other angels, unless Sam missed his guess—appeared beside the table Cas had just vacated. They looked around angrily and disappeared.

"He's trying to keep the angel tablet away from them," Sam realized.

Dean grumbled something about Cas being too stubborn to ask for help.

"Well, it's not like we can catch up with him while he's doing _that_."

Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head.

Sam returned his attention to the Machine. "So what about Carter? Can we help her?"

_+ASSET JOCELYN CARTER IS INVESTIGATING MURDERS COMMITTED BY AN ORGANIZATION OF CORRUPT POLICE OFFICERS KNOWN AS HR._

Two windows appeared at once, one with an obituary for a Det. Bill Szymanski, the other with an obituary for… Cal Beecher. Both brothers swore.

_+ASSET JOCELYN CARTER HAS EXTRACTED HERSELF FROM AN ATTEMPT ON HER OWN LIFE, BUT HR IS NOW TRYING TO FRAME HER FOR MURDER WHEN SHE WAS IN FACT DEFENDING HERSELF FROM AN ARMED ASSAILANT._

Sam's blood boiled. He hadn't talked to Carter much, but from what he had seen, she was a good cop and a good friend to John and Harold. Dean's expression told Sam he felt the same way. If John and Harold were too tied up with this Decima business, the Winchesters would have to step in to help Carter.

"Give me everything you've got on HR," Sam commanded.

His email obligingly pinged with an anonymous email that had _HR_ as the subject and an attachment. When opened, however, the attachment turned out to have been heavily compressed, because all manner of files spilled out—audio, video, emails, organization charts, and more. Dean swore repeatedly.

"We gotta get this to Carter," Sam finally said and started to forward the email.

"**Stay**," the Machine said through the laptop's speakers.

Sam stopped. "What?"

_+ASSET JOCELYN CARTER IS NOT IN IMMINENT DANGER YET._

"We don't want her to be!"

_+THE DEMON TARGETING KEVIN TRAN IS VERY ANGRY ABOUT JEREMY LAMBERT'S ATTEMPT TO CLOSE THE GATES OF HELL._

"Well, hell," said Dean. "Was Charlie right about Lambert?"

_+IN A SENSE. HE WORKS FOR DECIMA TECHNOLOGIES._

"Then why should we care?"

_+THE DEMON BELIEVES YOU ARE INVOLVED. HE MAY TARGET INNOCENT PEOPLE TO STOP YOU FROM CONTINUING._

Dean swore again. "We shoulda ganked Crowley years ago."

"If we kill Crowley now," Sam asked, "will Lambert be able to complete the trials?"

_+INSUFFICIENT DATA_

"Figures," Dean muttered.

Sam sighed. "Is Crowley likely to target Carter?"

_+UNKNOWN_

"So why can't we send Carter the files now and let her take down HR while we deal with Crowley?"

_+ASSET JOCELYN CARTER WILL NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE WHEN SHE MAKES THE FINAL ARRESTS. EVEN WITH THE INVOLVEMENT OF ADMIN AND ALL OTHER CURRENT ASSETS, I CALCULATE A __**98.3%**__ CHANCE THAT ASSET JOCELYN CARTER WILL DIE._

Sam felt the blood drain from his face. "And if we're there?"

_+CHANCE OF SURVIVAL: __**99%**_

Sam took a deep breath and looked at Dean.

Dean leaned forward. "All right, look. We're locked down for twenty-four hours. That's plenty of time to figure out how we're gonna gank Crowley and save Carter. But as long as we're in god mode, there's some other information I want, and I don't want Charlie askin' questions about how we're getting it. So I'm gonna ask now."

_+INPUT QUERY_

"Give us the numbers or coordinates of every known monster in the continental US."

_+PLEASE REFINE SEARCH TERMS_

"Let's start with shapeshifters. You know what those are."

Sam's email pinged a few seconds later. He opened the new email, with the subject _Shapeshifters_, to find a long list of Social Security numbers.

"Okay, how about djinn?"

_+PLEASE DEFINE_

Sam rattled off a description of the two types of djinn they knew about. Two emails arrived, one for each type.

"Vampires," Dean tried next.

A new email arrived.

"Leviathans," Sam said.

_+NO RESULTS_

"That's a relief."

For the rest of the night, the brothers fed search criteria to the Machine and got list after list of hits, with only the occasional _No results_ or _No results in the continental US_ response until they started going through some of the bestiaries in the library to get data on really obscure monsters. By the time they finished, they had thousands, if not millions, of potential hunts at their fingertips.

Dean sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Thanks, Machine. Here's hopin' this'll save a lot of lives."

"About Carter, though," Sam said. "When we get to New York, we'll probably still need you to guide us to the right threat."

_+CONFIRMED_

"We'll save her," Dean vowed.

Sam looked at Dean. "You got a plan?"

Dean responded with what could only be described as a Hannibal Smith grin.

* * *

_May 25, 2013  
__New York City_

Joss was almost dizzy with relief as she finally left the Third Precinct with John in tow. Ever since the Winchesters' little red-headed friend (whose name was _so_ not Carrie Asimov) had turned up at JFK on Monday with a flash drive full of info from a "white-hat hacker" that had given Joss the goods on HR and the Russian Mafia, her life had been a whirlwind of paperwork and arrests and terror and triumph. The FBI and the clean cops had succeeded in rounding up all but the top two men in HR; she and John had delivered Alonzo Quinn to the FBI personally, but Patrick Simmons was in the wind and probably already in Canada. She had her revenge for Cal and Szymanski. She had her rank and reputation as a homicide detective restored. And she had a long talk with John ahead, now that he'd confessed his feelings for her before giving himself up to clear her path to get Quinn the last mile to the Feds. But first, they were meeting Finch for a little celebration. In fact, if she looked, she could just see Finch about half a block away on the other side of the street, coming down the sidewalk toward them.

She turned to look over her shoulder and smile at John.

A payphone across the street began to ring.

She turned back to see Simmons coming around the corner of the building, his face red with rage and his hand raising his service weapon. "I told you I'd kill you—"

_BLAM!_

Simmons dropped, two gaping holes in the back of his head… and behind him stood the Winchesters, lowering their smoking pistols.

The payphone stopped ringing.

Sam looked across the street and motioned for Finch to get out of sight. Dean stepped around the corpse and over to Joss.

"Dean?" she squeaked.

"You all right, Detective?" he asked.

She fought to draw a deep breath and nod. "Yeah, yeah. Never thought I'd be so glad to see you guys."

That was all the time they had for pleasantries before the unis came swarming out of the building. The Winchesters did most of the talking, but Joss had pulled herself together by the time someone got around to taking her statement. John, of course, had to keep his distance and pretend he didn't know her to preserve his own cover, but she caught at least a few of the worried glances he sent her when he thought no one else was looking.

Once the coroner's van arrived to collect the corpse, though, she finally had time to process how close she and John had come to potentially fatal injury. She didn't know whether John was wearing a vest, but she wasn't wearing one herself. Simmons had been aiming at John, but if she'd put a foot wrong… if she'd drawn his fire at all….

"Hey," said Sam, coming out of nowhere to steady her before her knees could give way. "Are you okay?"

"No," she admitted tearfully as he guided her back to lean against the wall. "I'm not wearin' my vest. He almost… he could have…." She couldn't make herself say it.

"We know," Sam whispered. "That's why we're here."

"And _John_…."

"Simmons never fired. John is fine."

Joss let out a ragged breath. "Taylor," she said shakily. "My phone… I need to talk to my boy…."

"May I reach into your pocket?"

She nodded jerkily.

Sam retrieved her phone, held it while she found Taylor's number and called, and supported her arm as she held the phone to her ear.

"Mom!" Taylor answered on the first ring. "Are you okay? We just heard on TV that there was a shooting…."

"I'm fine, baby," Joss answered, unsure if he could hear how much her voice was quavering. "I wasn't hurt. I'm okay."

There was a _pfoof_, probably Taylor sighing in relief. "Okay. Okay, that's… that's good. Yeah."

"Be good for your dad, okay? I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll hold you to that, Mom. I love you."

"Love you, too, Taylor," she said and lost her grip on the phone.

Sam caught it and hung up for her before sliding it back into her pocket. "Here. Sit down."

She let him guide her into something closer to a controlled sitting motion than a collapse. Her breathing was still pretty ragged. Her mind kept replaying those five seconds… Simmons' short white hair, his twisted red face, his blazing blue eyes, his bellow… his _weapon…_.

"Hey." Long brown hair, worried green-hazel eyes, gentle hands, gentle voice. "Stay with me, Detective."

She nodded. She finally understood why Vicki Winter had thought Henri Musset would have sought out Sam's help in dealing with Alex Declan if they'd known each other at Stanford. Two years ago, given their record and outstanding warrants, she'd have busted the Winchesters just for existing in New York City, but now… Dean had saved her life twice, and Sam… Sam was battling for her sanity.

Speaking of Dean, he walked over to Joss and handed her a bottle of water, dripping with condensation. "Here," he said kindly. "Still sealed."

Joss checked the seal, and it was indeed intact. "Thanks," she said, managed to get it open without spilling, and drank. The cold water was refreshing and grounding at the same time, and she tried not to drink it too quickly.

She'd gotten through about half the bottle when she heard a male voice say, "Ed Solis, IAB. I'm looking for Det. Carter."

And suddenly she was looking at the backs of the Winchesters' legs, as if they already knew that Solis had been the IAB detective who'd railroaded her after HR had set her up. Solis himself was clean, as far as she knew, but he'd been too quick to believe HR's version of events over hers.

"Det. Solis," Dean called in a commanding voice. "Agent Daltrey, Agent Bonham, FBI." The brothers flashed their FBI credentials in tandem.

Solis sounded surprised when he answered, "Agents. New in town?"

"We're stationed in Topeka," Sam lied. "We're doing follow-up on a serial case we worked with Det. Carter back in February, out on Owen Island. Just got to town this afternoon. Confidential source told us we could find Det. Carter here, and we showed up just in time to keep her from getting shot."

"Det. Carter never even touched her own weapon," Dean added. "_We_ fired the only shots. If anyone's Internal Affairs needs to look into this, it's the Bureau's, not NYPD's."

Joss decided it was time to speak for herself. "You still think I'm trigger-happy, Solis?"

The Winchesters stepped aside to let her make eye contact with Solis, who at least had the grace to look ashamed. "For what it's worth, Carter," he said, "I'm sorry about what happened last time. But the call tonight said 'officer-involved shooting.' I have to check it out."

"I was 'involved' only in the sense that Simmons almost shot me! What do I have to do to prove that? Submit to a paraffin test? Let you check my weapon? Wait while you get video from the RTCC, which—oh—you shoulda done already? Wait for the damn autopsy to show that he died from two shots to the back of the head, which I could not have fired while standing in front of him, and for ballistics to prove neither shot was fired from my gun?!"

Solis raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, I've got your statement. It fits what the ME already told me. You're free to go."

"_Thank_ you," Joss returned and accepted the hand up that Sam offered her.

"We're parked around back," Dean told her as she brushed herself off. "Drive you home?"

She considered a moment—John had disappeared, apparently—and then nodded. "Thanks."

The brothers ushered her back through the building and out to the rear parking lot. And there stood the Winchesters' infamous Impala, parked in a blind spot beneath a camera; Finch was standing by the front bumper, and John was sitting on the hood. They looked like they'd already had whatever conversation they needed to have about the shooting and were waiting for her.

"Let's get outta here," Dean murmured.

John opened the rear driver's-side door for Joss while Sam jogged around to get the rear passenger door for Finch. Joss slid to the middle of the seat, and Finch and John got in on either side of her. Then the Winchesters got in the front, closing their doors at exactly the same time, and they drove away.

John waited two blocks before wrapping Joss in a crushing hug and pressing trembling lips to the top of her head.

She leaned against his chest. "I'm okay, John. I'm here."

"Promise me," he choked out. "Promise me you'll always wear your vest from now on."

"Only if you'll make me the same promise."

"Joss, I almost lost you."

"And I almost lost _you_. Will you let somebody other than Finch worry about you for a change?"

Joss suddenly felt Finch's trembling hand slide into hers. "For what it's worth, Detective," Finch said quietly, "I have lost too many friends in recent years. I am glad to count you still among the living." He squeezed her hand, sniffled, and shifted to look out the window.

She squeezed back. "Glad we still have you, too, Harold."

An unfamiliar ringtone sounded, and Sam answered, "Hey, Charlie. … Where? … Sounds good. Text me directions. … Awesome. See you there."

Joss let herself drift as Dean drove further uptown, losing track of time and location as she simply listened to John's heartbeat and felt the gentle pressure of Finch's hand. Part of her did worry that it was too soon to be moving on from Cal—it had been only a month since she'd lost any chance to work things out with him—but wherever the future with John might lead… here and now, she was just glad to be alive and safe and loved.

At last, the Impala came to a halt in front of a midtown diner. Inside, seated at a large round table, were Fusco and Shaw and the red-head, whom the Winchesters greeted as "Charlie." By unspoken agreement, Joss wound up at the very back of the table, sandwiched between John and Fusco, while the Winchesters sat at the outside ends of the curved booth and let Charlie introduce them to Shaw.

They hadn't been there long when a waitress brought them menus and took drink orders. "And just so you know," the waitress said as she wrote down the last order, "your meal has already been paid for by the gentleman at the counter."

Joss thought she recognized the man even from the back, just from his tight-fitting shirt, slicked-back dark hair, and deep tan. Then he turned, and the scar that curved from the corner of his eye across his high cheekbone confirmed her gut instinct—it was Anthony Marconi, Elias' right-hand man. She hadn't told anyone that she'd saved Elias from a joint hit by the Russians and HR, but apparently this was Elias' version of a thank-you note. Marconi winked at her and raised his coffee cup in salute, drained it, and left without another glance at their table.

"What was that all about?" John asked.

"Nothing," Joss said and put her head on his shoulder. "I'll tell you later."

Shaw and Charlie carried most of the conversation until the waitress returned with the drinks. But once the drinks were delivered, Finch sat up even straighter than usual.

"I'd like to propose a toast," he said, raising his glass. "To life."

"To life," Shaw echoed.

"_L'chaim_," said John, Fusco, and the Winchesters.

Joss could only smile, raise her glass with the others, and drink.

* * *

Meanwhile, across town, the security cameras of a particular branch of OneState Bank went to static as a powerful spirit walked through the walls, into the vault, and up to the safe deposit box registered to one Ruediger Smoot. The locks opened at a touch, and shortly thereafter a hand reached into the box to pull out two backup drives, which contained an AI program called Samaritan. A swipe of said hand erased both drives. Then, after a moment's consideration, a snap of the fingers encoded the drives with a virus that would not only destroy the computer that read them and all other computers and servers connected to that computer but also place an especially nasty curse on the one who ordered the drives stolen.

No matter what happened, Arthur Claypool—alias Ruediger Smoot—would never know that his brainchild was no more. If the Machine and her human pals managed to get to the drives ahead of Decima, they'd destroy them, and the curse would never be triggered. Jeremy Lambert had been captured and killed by Crowley before he could complete his mission, for Decima or for the Winchesters, so it was possible that Decima was far enough behind that Team Machine would win this one, although Decima still had other shenanigans in progress that the humans would have to deal with on their own. But if not, if Decima got to the drives first, which seemed more likely… well, John Greer was planning to turn Samaritan into a false god, one that would threaten more than just Team Machine. In Gabriel's book, that made Greer deserving of a very good trick indeed.


End file.
